Cargo cult programming is an incompetent style of computer programming characterized by the ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. Cargo cult programmers will usually explain the redundant code as a way of working around a computer bug encountered in the past. Typically, however, they do not understand either the bug or the apparent solution (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). Computer programming (often simply programming) is the craft of implementing one or more interrelated abstract algorithms using a particular programming language to produce a concrete computer program. ... A computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working correctly or produces an incorrect result. ... Shotgun debugging is a process of making relatively undirected changes to software in the hope that a bug will be perturbed out of existence. ... Voodoo programming (a term derived from voodoo economics) is using a programming device, system or language which you do not fully understand, the implication being that the end result should not actually work, or even if it does accidentally work you will not know why. ...

The term 'cargo cult' refers to aboriginal religions which grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults centered on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military landing strips in the hope of summoning the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Use in computer programming probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization of certain practices as Cargo cult science. The article is about cargo cults as a religious phenomenon. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918–February 15, 1988) (surname pronounced FINE-man; in IPA) was one of the most influential American physicists of the 20th century, expanding greatly the theory of quantum electrodynamics. ... Cargo Cult Science is a term invented by Richard Feynman to describe a particular type of pseudoscience in which all the superficial aspects of scientific inquiry are adhered to, although the underlying causal link between the conditions and the outcome is not understood. ...

This page, or a previous version of it, comes from the Jargon file (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html)

References

• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman, W. W. Norton & Co, New York, 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7. The one of the chapters is the transcript of the commencement address linked below, which contained the coining of "Cargo cult science".

Also here is the earlier talk "Cargo Cult Science", Richard Feynman, From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. online at http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html Words and phrases are often created, or coined, by combining existing words, or by giving words new and unique suffixes and/or prefixes. ... Cargo Cult Science is a term invented by Richard Feynman to describe a particular type of pseudoscience in which all the superficial aspects of scientific inquiry are adhered to, although the underlying causal link between the conditions and the outcome is not understood. ...