| Term |
Description |
Example |
| Munge |
To distort, eg. when an intermediary passes on a message they may convey a different meaning (the "Chinese whispers" effect). |
The information was munged by the time it got to me |
| Chimped |
Used to describe something that is broken or otherwise not working as expected. |
The import process is chimped |
| Goosed |
A combination of "Chimped" and "meh". |
This data is goosed |
| Snarfed |
Similar to Chimped and derived from SNAFU, Snarfed is often used when something is determined not to work. |
It's completely snarfed |
| Fish |
A wildcard word used to save time when quickly prototyping something. It's most commonly used when we need to convey design or specifications for something, usually on-screen text or links, but haven't had time to think up the correct terminology. |
Enable fish |
| Doh! |
Taken from "The Simpsons", it's the expression we use when we do something stoopid, specifically at the exact moment we realise that what we've just done is stoopid. |
Doh! |
| Arse. |
Similar to "Doh!" and used in scenarios where you had a hunch something bad was going to happen before it happened, or had already realised something wasn't going to work but continued anyway just to make sure. An often verbal alternative to *sigh*. |
Arse. |
| Pants |
Something that's just useless, pathetic or otherwise not worth blogging about. |
Internet Explorer is pants |
| Thrutching Tube |
A blunt phallic tubular instrument often associated with paggerising something or rigorous poking. |
Someone's pillaged this with a thrutching tube |
| Paggerise |
Often used in conjunction with "thrutching tube", this term is used to denote beating, kicking or otherwise violently and relentlessly prodding, eg. beating a problem in to submission, kicking a component in to shape, prodding something until it starts working. |
It's been paggerised with a thrutching tube |
| Paggered |
An understatement as to the sheer overwhelming scale of past-tense localised paggerisation, often used to refer to something that's now broken beyond repair, eg. after being nuked. |
It's paggered |
| Cruft |
Junk - usually encountered when reviewing old code or recently refactored code, unnecessary or now-worthless code is often found and removed. Wikipedia. Not to be confused with dog shows. |
It shrank after I ripped out the cruft |
| Mince |
Similar to "cruft", this term is used to describe pointless or irrelevant content that just gets in the way of everything else. Also used to describe something that's overly complex. |
This contract is full of legal mince |
| Herd |
Used to denote plurality or groups of things. |
A herd of cruft |
| Veritable herd |
Generally an overstatement of the amount or number of something, often inferring a sense of being miffed or overjoyed (without stating which - that has to be derived from the context of the term). |
A veritable herd of mince or A veritable herd of sales |
| Nuke |
A term used to refer to brutally deleting something in a manner where it's impossible to get it back should you later decide that you didn't want to delete it (generally resulting in a "Doh!" or "Arse." moment). |
Nuke the test data |
| Decidedly non-trivial |
An engineer term used to understate the near-impossible (because nothing is "impossible" to a real engineer) nature of the task at hand. |
Implementing that in a performant, secure and cost-effective manner is a decidedly non-trivial task. |
| Huw Stare |
A decidedly stern facial expression often aimed in the general direction of a piece of malfunctioning server hardware, often a precursor to hitting it with a hammer. |
Give it the Huw stare and see if that fixes it |
| Goptimise |
A term used to describe something that's been over-optimised to the point that it no longer does anything when it should at least do something. Derived from the fact that it was usually Guy Fraser who caused the over-optimisation. |
Ah, you've Goptimised it! |
| Miffed |
Slightly or mildly annoyed, sometimes accompanied with finger-pointing reference to the source of annoyance. Occasionally an understated indication of extreme annoyance (or even acute anger) which goes unnoticed. |
I'm miffed at that |
| Aarrgh! |
Momentary outburst of frustration, often repeated several times until the feeling of frustration subsides. The number of vowels and consonants used has a linear relationship to the level of frustration. |
Aaarrrgghh! |
| Rargh! |
Used to convey a sense of "Argh!" to someone else when you know neither party particularly wants to discuss the source or cause of frustration. |
Rargh! |
| Yarg |
A calm acknowledgement that something is grim, often used as a verbal or textual "hug" for the person who is experiencing the grim thing in the hope that they will de-grimmify it and stop bothering you. The opposite of "Rargh!". |
Yarg |
| UPPERCASE |
Any word (or even an entire paragraph) that is conveyed in UPPERCASE text in a vain attempt to make someone who doesn't understand what you are saying (or at least you think they don't understand) somehow suddenly get the message because it's now in UPPERCASE. Often found amidst herds of legal mince. This is also used in everyday life, albeit verbal - ie. speaking much louder or shouting to get your point across, as if that somehow makes a difference. |
Do NOT do that, it's WRONG!! |
| Chuff |
Not to be confused with "chuffed", this term indicates an excess of something. |
It's kludgy as chuff |
| Chuffed |
An expression of individual fulfilment, but not in the biblical sense, especially when something worked better than expected. |
I'm well chuffed with the de-crufting |
| Borked |
When something goes horribly wrong, usually spewing out vast reams of error messages. The software equivalent of "throwing the rattle out of the pram". |
The first time I ran it, it borked hard |
| Muppet |
A gentle taunt at someone who's done something blatantly stupid (sometimes known as "having a blonde moment"). Often preceded by a "Doh!" moment. |
You muppet! |
| Kludge |
Inspired by Atlassian's blog, we realised we also use this term. Denotes something that will work, but is far from being best practice and is akin to fixing something with sticky tape and paper clips until a better solution is found. |
It's cludgy, but should make it work |
| meh |
*shrug* |
meh |
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