The New Hacker's Dictionary
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In the role of, usually in an organization-chart sense. "Pete is currently defined as bug prioritizer." Compare [3783]logical.
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dehose /dee-hohz/ vt.
To clear a [3787]hosed condition.
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deletia n. /d*-lee'sha/
[USENET; common] In an email reply, material omitted from the quote of the original. Usually written rather than spoken; often appears as a pseudo-tag or ellipsis in the body of the reply, as "[deletia]" or "<deletia>".
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deliminator /de-lim'-in-ay-t*r/ n.
[portmanteau, delimiter + eliminate] A string or pattern used to delimit text into fields, but which is itself eliminated from the resulting list of fields. This jargon seems to have originated among Perl hackers in connection with the Perl split() function; however, it has been sighted in live use among Java and even Visual Basic programmers.
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delint /dee-lint/ v. obs.
To modify code to remove problems detected when [3797]linting. Confusingly, this process is also referred to as `linting' code. This term is no longer in general use because ANSI C compilers typically issue compile-time warnings almost as detailed as lint warnings.
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delta n.
1. [techspeak] A quantitative change, especially a small or incremental one (this use is general in physics and engineering). "I just doubled the speed of my program!" "What was the delta on program size?" "About 30 percent." (He doubled the speed of his program, but increased its size by only 30 percent.) 2. [Unix] A [3801]diff, especially a [3802]diff stored under the set of version-control tools called SCCS (Source Code Control System) or RCS (Revision Control System). 3. n. A small quantity, but not as small as [3803]epsilon. The jargon usage of [3804]delta and [3805]epsilon stems from the traditional use of these letters in mathematics for very small numerical quantities, particularly in `epsilon-delta' proofs in limit theory (as in the differential calculus). The term [3806]delta is often used, once [3807]epsilon has been mentioned, to mean a quantity that is slightly bigger than [3808]epsilon but still very small. "The cost isn't epsilon, but it's delta" means that the cost isn't totally negligible, but it is nevertheless very small. Common constructions include `within delta of --', `within epsilon of --': that is, `close to' and `even closer to'.
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demented adj.
Yet another term of disgust used to describe a malfunctioning program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the design is bad. Said, for example, of a program that generates large numbers of meaningless error messages, implying that it is on the brink of imminent collapse. Compare [3812]wonky, [3813]brain-damaged, [3814]bozotic.
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demigod n.
A hacker with years of experience, a world-wide reputation, and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of [3818]Unix and [3819]C), Richard M. Stallman (inventor of [3820]EMACS), Larry Wall (inventor of [3821]Perl), Linus Torvalds (inventor of [3822]Linux), and most recently James Gosling (inventor of Java, [3823]NeWS, and [3824]GOSMACS) and Guido van Rossum (inventor of [3825]Python). In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major software project has been driven to completion by the author's veiled hopes of apotheosis. See also [3826]net.god, [3827]true-hacker.
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demo /de'moh/
[short for `demonstration'] 1. v. To demonstrate a product or prototype. A far more effective way of inducing bugs to manifest than any number of [3831]test runs, especially when important people are watching. 2. n. The act of demoing. "I've gotta give a demo of the drool-proof interface; how does it work again?" 3. n. Esp. as `demo version', can refer either to an early, barely-functional version of a program which can be used for demonstration purposes as long as the operator uses exactly the right commands and skirts its numerous bugs, deficiencies, and unimplemented portions, or to a special version of a program (frequently with some features crippled) which is distributed at little or no cost to the user for enticement purposes. 4. [[3832]demoscene] A sequence of [3833]demoeffects (usually) combined with self-composed music and hand-drawn ("pixelated") graphics. These days (1997) usually built to attend a [3834]compo. Often called `eurodemos' outside Europe, as most of the [3835]demoscene activity seems to have gathered in northern Europe and especially Scandinavia. See also [3836]intro, [3837]dentro.
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demo mode n.
1. [Sun] The state of being [3841]heads down in order to finish code in time for a [3842]demo, usually due yesterday. 2. A mode in which video games sit by themselves running through a portion of the game, also known as `attract mode'. Some serious [3843]apps have a demo mode they use as a screen saver, or may go through a demo mode on startup (for example, the Microsoft Windows opening screen -- which lets you impress your neighbors without actually having to put up with [3844]Microsloth
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Windows).
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demoeffect n.
[[3848]demoscene] What among hackers is called a [3849]display hack. Classical effects include "plasma" (colorful mess), "keftales" (x*x+y*y and other similar patterns, usually combined with color-cycling), realtime fractals, realtime 3d graphics, etc. Historically, demo effects have cheated as much as possible to gain more speed and more complexity, using low-precision math and masses of assembler code and building animation realtime are three common tricks, but use of special hardware to fake effects is a [3850]Good Thing on the demoscene (though this is becoming less common as platforms like the Amiga fade away).
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demogroup n.
[[3854]demoscene] A group of [3855]demo (sense 4) composers. Job titles within a group include coders (the ones who write programs), graphicians (the ones who painstakingly pixelate the fine art), musicians (the music composers), [3856]sysops, traders/swappers (the ones who do the trading and other PR), and organizers (in larger groups). It is not uncommon for one person to do multiple jobs, but it has been observed that good coders are rarely good composers and vice versa. [How odd. Musical talent seems common among Internet/Unix hackers --ESR]
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demon n.
1. [MIT] A portion of a program that is not invoked explicitly, but that lies dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See [3860]daemon. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system. 2. [outside MIT] Often used equivalently to [3861]daemon -- especially in the [3862]Unix world, where the latter spelling and pronunciation is considered mildly archaic.
Demons in sense 1 are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge-manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile, the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was.
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demon dialer n.
A program which repeatedly calls the same telephone number. Demon dialing may be benign (as when a number of communications programs contend for legitimate access to a [3866]BBS line) or malign (that is, used as a prank or denial-of-service attack). This term dates from the [3867]blue box days of the 1970s and early 1980s and is now semi-obsolescent among [3868]phreakers; see [3869]war dialer for its contemporary progeny.
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demoparty n.
[[3873]demoscene] Aboveground descendant of the [3874]copyparty, with emphasis shifted away from software piracy and towards [3875]compos. Smaller demoparties, for 100 persons or less, are held quite often, sometimes even once a month, and usually last for one to two days. On the other end of the scale, huge demo parties are held once a year (and four of these have grown very large and occur annually - Assembly in Finland, The Party in Denmark, The Gathering in Norway, and NAID somewhere in north America). These parties usually last for three to five days, have room for 3000-5000 people, and have a party network with connection to the internet.
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demoscene /dem'oh-seen/
[also `demo scene'] A culture of multimedia hackers located primarily in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that when old-time [3879]warez d00dz cracked some piece of software they often added an advertisement of in the beginning, usually containing colorful [3880]display hacks with greetings to other cracking groups. The demoscene was born among people who decided building these display hacks is more interesting than hacking and began to build self-contained display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within the culture such a hack is called a [3881]demo). The split seems to have happened at the end of the 1980s. As more of these [3882]demogroups emerged, they started to have [3883]compos at copying parties (see [3884]copyparty),
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which later evolved to standalone events (see [3885]demoparty). The demoscene has retained some traits from the [3886]warez d00dz, including their style of handles and group names and some of their jargon.
Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the like. Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and a couple of years after that, they also started using Java.
Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While deeply underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the mainstream as accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the commercialization of bigger demoparties. Older demosceneers frown at this, but the majority think it's a good direction. Many demosceneers end up working in the computer game industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at [3887]http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and [3888]http://www.scene.org/.
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dentro /den'troh/
[[3892]demoscene] Combination of [3893]demo (sense 4) and [3894]intro. Other name mixings include intmo, dentmo etc. and are used usually when the authors are not quite sure whether the program is a [3895]demo or an [3896]intro. Special-purpose coinages like wedtro (some member of a group got married), invtro (invitation intro) etc. have also been sighted.
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depeditate /dee-ped'*-tayt/ n.
[by (faulty) analogy with `decapitate'] Humorously, to cut off the feet of. When one is using some computer-aided typesetting tools, careless placement of text blocks within a page or above a rule can result in chopped-off letter descenders. Such letters are said to have been depeditated.
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deprecated adj.
Said of a program or feature that is considered obsolescent and in the process of being phased out, usually in favor of a specified replacement. Deprecated features can, unfortunately, linger on for many years. This term appears with distressing frequency in standards documents when the committees writing the documents realize that large amounts of extant (and presumably happily working) code depend on the feature(s) that have passed out of favor. See also [3903]dusty deck.
[Usage note: don't confuse this word with `depreciate', or the verb form `deprecate' with `depreciated`. They are different words; see any dictionary for discussion.]
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derf /derf/ v.,n.
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[PLATO] The act of exploiting a terminal which someone else has absentmindedly left logged on, to use that person's account, especially to post articles intended to make an ass of the victim you're impersonating. It has been alleged that the term originated as a reversal of the name of the gentleman who most usually left himself vulnerable to it, who also happened to be the head of the department that handled PLATO at the University of Delaware.
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deserves to lose adj.
[common] Said of someone who willfully does the [3910]Wrong Thing; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be [3911]marginal. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's [3912]losing actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use [3913]mess-dos deserves to [3914]lose!" ([3915]ITS fans used to say the same thing of [3916]Unix; many still do.) See also [3917]screw, [3918]chomp, [3919]bagbiter.
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desk check n.,v.
To [3923]grovel over hardcopy of source code, mentally simulating the control flow; a method of catching bugs. No longer common practice in this age of on-screen editing, fast compiles, and sophisticated debuggers -- though some maintain stoutly that it ought to be. Compare [3924]eyeball search, [3925]vdiff, [3926]vgrep.
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