Cruft
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- For the dog show, see Crufts.
- For the Wikipedia usage, see Wikipedia:Fancruft.
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[edit] Computing
In hacker jargon, cruft describes areas of something which are badly designed, poorly implemented or redundant. The term is typically applied to computer programming code and computer programs, but can be applied more generally to any device or situation where the observer feels it applies. Whether something is crufty or not is a matter of opinion - for instance, a pile of old computer parts might be 'cruft', but having three of the same part might not, even though it is redundant. The concept can be compared to Philip K. Dick's idea of kipple.
In computer programming, code is cruft if it is duplicating code elsewhere in the system, is unnecessarily complicated, is a poor solution to the problem it solves, is left over from a previous change, etc. Code cruft is comparable to dust bunnies, as it is one outcome of not tidying up regularly. The FreeBSD handbook refers to stale object code as cruft, which occurs when code is changed, but the program is not recompiled - this can cause the BSD equivalent of DLL hell.
When referring to URLs, 'cruft' is the parts which are only relevant or meaningful to the people who created the site, such as implementation details of the computer system which serves the page. Examples of URL cruft include File extensions such as .php or .html, and internal organisational details such as /public/ or /~users/john/work/drafts/. See also Clean URLs.
[edit] Popular culture
Cruft may also refer to useless junk or excess materials (including obsolete computer hardware) that build up over time and have no value, including things collected from rubbish bins, so "dumpster diving" is also called "crufting", and things collected from rubbish bins are called crufted.
Cruft is also used as a suffix and appended to words to create terms such as "Fancruft", "Listcruft" or "Sciencecruft". In those instances, the word is meant to describe material which is typically lacking in quality, selectively biased, of a poor nature and of interest only to a small audience in the respective field.
In MIT slang, "cruft" refers to people who spend a lot of time at MIT, even though they are no longer students there. http://slugwiki.mit.edu/index.php/Cruft
[edit] Etymology
Although the origins of this term are uncertain, it is suggested that the term is derived from Harvard University Cruft Laboratory, which was the Harvard Physics Department's radar lab during World War II. As late as the early 1990s, unused technical equipment could be seen stacked in front of Cruft Hall's windows. By the whimsical humor of the student body, if the place filled with useless machinery is called Cruft Hall, the machinery itself must be cruft. This image of "undiscarded technical clutter" quickly migrated from hardware to software.
The word "cruft" may also be evocative of the terms "crust" and "fluff", both of which may carry connotations of content that is at once extraneous, superfluous, inflexible, or superannuated.
A variety of fanciful etymologies has been proposed.
The Jargon File suggests that the word "crufty", from which "cruft" could be derived by backformation, was originally meant to imply that "crusty" was being spelled with a long s, (ſ), a long-obsolete English letterform that looks like an f.
The word "cruft" may also be a corruption of the word "craft" in past tense, implying a work that has been done in such a way that it is already old looking.
The proposed acronym "Commodity Residue Undergoing Fanciful Transit" is retroactive and a backronym.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Crufty at the Jargon File
- In the Beginning...was the Command Line long article by Neal Stephenson which includes insightful coverage of the "cruft" concept.
- Make way for Cruftlings, a hack by MIT students.
