WhatIs

/frē-kᵊn/

[from phone phreak]

n. 1. The art and science of cracking the phone network (so as, for example, to make free long-distance calls).

2. By extension, security-cracking in any other context (especially, but not exclusively, on communications networks).

/fāz əv t͟hə mün/

n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine.

"This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon."

/fāz/

1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle. This is a useful concept among people who often work at night and/or according to no fixed schedule. It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as 6 hours per day on a regular basis.

"What's your phase?"

"I've been getting in about 8 P.M. lately, but I'm going to wrap around to the day schedule by Friday."

/pet-skē/

[abbreviation of PET ASCII]

n. The variation (many would say perversion) of the ASCII character set used by the Commodore Business Machines PET series of personal computers and the later Commodore C64, C16, and C128 machines. The PETSCII set used left-arrow and up-arrow (as in old-style ASCII) instead of underscore and caret, placed the unshifted alphabet at positions 65-90, put the shifted alphabet at positions 193-218, and added graphics characters.

/pe-tə/

[SI]

pref. See quantifiers.

/pe-sə-mi-ziŋ kəm-pī-lər/

[antonym of optimizing compiler]

n. A compiler that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious hand translation. The implication is that the compiler is actually trying to optimize the program, but through excessive cleverness is doing the opposite. A few pessimizing compilers have been written on purpose, however, as pranks or burlesques.

/pesəməl/

[Latin-based antonym for 'optimal']

adj. Maximally bad.

"This is a pessimal situation."

Also pessimize vt. To make as bad as possible. These words are the obvious Latin-based antonyms for optimal and optimize, but for some reason they do not appear in most English dictionaries, although pessimize is listed in the OED.

/pɜːrl/

[Practical Extraction and Report Language, a.k.a Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister]

/pər-fikt prō-gra-mər sin-drōm/ or /P-P-S/

n. Arrogance; the egotistical conviction that one is above normal human error. Most frequently found among programmers of some native ability but relatively little experience (especially new graduates; their perceptions may be distorted by a history of excellent performance at solving toy problems).

"Of course my program is correct, there is no need to test it."

/perf/

n. See chad (sense 1). The term perfory /per'f*-ree/ is also heard.