WhatIs

/ri-kər-zhən a-krə-nim/

pl. n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms. The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not UNIX!" -- and a company with the name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support".

/ri-ˈkər-zhən/

n. See recursion.

See also tail recursion.

/rek-taŋ-gəl sliŋ-ər/

n. See polygon pusher.

/rē-pər/

n. A prowler that GFRs files. A file removed in this way is said to have been 'reaped'.

/rē-ˈa-lə-tē chek/

n. 1. The simplest kind of test of software or hardware; doing the equivalent of asking it what 2 + 2 is and seeing if you get 4. The software equivalent of a smoke test.

2. The act of letting a real user try out prototype software.

Compare sanity check.

/rē(-ə)l wər(-ə)ld/

n. 1. Those institutions at which 'programming' may be used in the same sentence as 'FORTRAN', 'COBOL', 'RPG', 'IBM', 'DBASE', etc. Places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and invoices.

2. The location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming.

/rē(-ə)l yü-zər/

n. 1. A commercial user. One who is paying *real* money for his computer usage.

2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (a research project, a course, etc.) other than pure exploration.

See user.

Hackers who are also students may also be real users.
"I need this fixed so I can do a problem set. I'm not complaining out of randomness, but as a real user."

See also luser.

/rē(-ə)l tīm/

1. [techspeak] adj. Describes an application which requires a program to respond to stimuli within some small upper limit of response time (typically milli- or microseconds). Process control at a chemical plant is the classic example. Such applications often require special operating systems (because everything else must take a back seat to response time) and speed-tuned hardware.

/rē(-ə)l sün nau/

[orig. from SF's fanzine community, popularized by Jerry Pournelle's column in 'BYTE']

adv. 1. Supposed to be available (or fixed, or cheap, or whatever) real soon now according to somebody, but the speaker is quite skeptical.

2. When one's gods, fates, or other time commitments permit one to get to it (in other words, don't hold your breath). Often abbreviated RSN.

/rē(-ə)l prō-gra-mər/

[indirectly, from the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche]