Rectangle Slinger
/rek-taŋ-gəl sliŋ-ər/
n. See polygon pusher.
Reality Check
/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.
Real World
/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.
Real User
/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.
Real Time
/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.
Real Soon Now
/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.
Real Programmer
/rē(-ə)l prō-gra-mər/
[indirectly, from the book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche]
Real Operating System
/rē(-ə)l ä-pə-rā-tiŋ si-stəm/
n. The sort the speaker is used to. People from the academic community are likely to issue comments like
"System V? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?", people from the commercial/industrial UNIX sector are known to complain "BSD? Why don't you use a *real* Operating System?", and people from IBM object "UNIX? Why don't you use a *real* operating system?"