WhatIs

/wərm/

[from tapeworm in John Brunner's novel The Shockwave Rider, via XEROX PARC]

n. A program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes.

Compare virus.

Nowadays the term has negative connotations, as it is assumed that only crackers write worms. Perhaps the best-known example was Robert T. Morris's Internet Worm of 1988, a benign one that got out of control and hogged hundreds of Suns and VAXen across the U.S.

/wər-kiŋ əz di-zīnəd/

[IBM]

adj. 

1. In conformance to a wrong or inappropriate specification; useful, but misdesigned.
2. Frequently used as a sardonic comment on a program's utility.

3. Unfortunately also used as a bogus reason for not accepting a criticism or suggestion. At IBM, this sense is used in official documents!

   See BAD.

/wərk-ə-rau̇nd/

n. A temporary kluge inserted in a system under development or test in order to avoid the effects of a bug or misfeature so that work can continue. Theoretically, workarounds are always replaced by fixes; in practice, customers often find themselves living with workarounds in the first couple of releases.

"The code died on NUL characters in the input, so I fixed it to interpret them as spaces."

/wərd pres/

WordPress is a widely-used and user-friendly content management system (CMS) that enables individuals and businesses to create and manage websites with ease. Founded in 2003, WordPress has grown to become one of the most popular platforms for website development and blogging. What sets WordPress apart is its intuitive interface and extensive library of themes and plugins, making it accessible to both novices and experienced developers.

/wäŋ-kē/

[from Australian slang]

adj. Yet another approximate synonym for broken. Specifically connotes a malfunction that produces behavior seen as crazy, humorous, or amusingly perverse.

"That was the day the printer's font logic went wonky and everybody's listings came out in Tengwar."

Also in wonked out.

See funky, demented, bozotic.

/wäm-bat/

[Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time]

adj. Applied to problems which are both profoundly uninteresting in themselves and unlikely to benefit anyone interesting even if solved. Often used in fanciful constructions such as wrestling with a wombat.

See also crawling horror, SMOP.

Also note the rather different usage as a meta-syntactic variable in Commonwealth Hackish.

/wüm bäks/

n. 

1. [TMRC] Storage space for equipment.
2. [proposed] A variety of hard-shell equipment case with heavy interior padding and/or shaped carrier cutouts in a foam-rubber matrix; mundanely called a flight case. Used for delicate test equipment, electronics, and musical instruments.

/wi-zərd-lē/

adj. Pertaining to wizards. A wizardly feature is one that only a wizard could understand or use properly.

/wi-zərd mōd/

[from rogue]

n. A special access mode of a program or system, usually passworded, that permits some users godlike privileges. Generally not used for operating systems themselves (root mode or wheel mode would be used instead).

/wi-zərd bu̇k/

n. Hal Abelson and Jerry Sussman's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT Press, 1984; ISBN 0-262-01077-1, an excellent computer science text used in introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on the jacket. One of the bibles of the LISP/scheme world.