WhatIs

/dōnt dü t͟hat, t͟hen!/

[from an old doctor's office joke about a patient with a trivial complaint]

Stock response to a user complaint.

"When I type control-S, the whole system comes to a halt for thirty seconds."

"Don't do that, then!" (or "So don't do that!").

Compare RTFM.

More Jargon:

/doh-mayn'ist/

adj. 1. Said of an Internet address (as opposed to a bang path) because the part to the right of the '@' specifies a nested series of 'domains'; for example, eric@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the top-level domain called com.

See also big-endian, sense 2.

2. Said of a site, mailer, or routing program which knows how to handle domainist addresses.

/dȯgwȯsh/

[From a quip in the 'urgency' field of a very optional software change request, ca. 1982. It was something like "Urgency: Wash your dog first".]

1. n. A project of minimal priority, undertaken as an escape from more serious work.

2. v. To engage in such a project. Many games and much freeware get written this way.

/dȯgkau̇/

n. See Moof.

/dä-jē/

adj. Syn. with flaky. Preferred outside the U.S.

/dä-kyə-mən-ˈtā-shən/

n. The multiple kilograms of macerated, pounded, steamed, bleached, and pressed trees that accompany most modern software or hardware products (see also tree-killer). Hackers seldom read paper documentation and (too) often resist writing it; they prefer theirs to be terse and on-line. A common comment on this is "You can't grep dead trees".

See drool-proof paper, verbiage.

/dō'kō/

[orig. in-house jargon at Symbolics]

n. A documentation writer.

See also devo and mango.

/dok/

n. Common spoken and written shorthand for 'documentation'. Often used in the plural 'docs' and in the construction 'doc file' (documentation available on-line).

/dü prō-tə-ˌkȯl/

[from network protocol programming]

vi. To perform an interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant means to ask for the check, calculate the tip and everybody's share, collect money from everybody, generate change as necessary, and pay the bill.

See protocol.

/D-N-S/

DNS, short for Domain Name System, is a fundamental component of how the internet functions. Think of DNS as the internet's address book, translating human-friendly website names (like www.example.com) into computer-readable IP addresses (like 192.0.2.1). When you type a website URL into your browser, your device relies on DNS to find the corresponding IP address, allowing you to access the desired webpage.