Cruft is a term generally applied to something useless or badly designed. It has more specific meanings in the field of computing. Crufts is an annual international Championship conformation show for dogs hosted by the Kennel Club (UK), currently held at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham, England. ... The word term refers to either a word unit or a time unit with specified boundaries or limits. ... For the formal concept of computation, see computation. ...

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' is a matter of opinion - for instance, a pile of various old computer parts might be 'cruft', but having three of the same part might not, even though it is redundant. This article is about computer hacking. ... For the glossary of hacker slang, see Jargon File. ... In computer programming, the word code refers to instructions to a computer in a programming language. ...

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.^[1] The FreeBSD handbook refers to stale object code as cruft, which occurs when code is changed, but the program is not recompiled^[2] - this can cause the BSD equivalent of DLL hell.^{[citation needed]} FreeBSD is a Unix-like free operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through the 386BSD and 4. ... In computer science, object file or object code is an intermediate representation of code generated by a compiler after it processes a source code file. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ... BSD redirects here. ... DLL hell is a colorful term given to any problem based on a difficulty in managing Dynamically Linked Libraries (DLLs) installed on a particular copy of an operating system. ...

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). // Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings: In popular usage and many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable... A filename extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file applied to indicate its type. ... // Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings: In popular usage and many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable...

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 "crufted". Junk may refer to: Junk (ship), sailing vessel of Chinese origin Junk (Transformers), fictional planet in the Transformers universe Junk (novel), by Melvin Burgess Junk (film), 2000 Japanese zombie film Waste, as in worthless material Hard drugs, junk being a slang term for that junk, slang for male genitals junk... This article is about the machine. ... For other uses, see Hardware (disambiguation). ... Dumpster diving is the practice of rummaging through trash, whether commercial or residential, to find items of use that have been discarded. ...

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, and of interest only to a small audience in the relevant field. For other senses of this word, see bias (disambiguation). ...

Etymology

Harvard Cruft Laboratory

The origin of the term is uncertain, but it may be 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 "discarded technical clutter" quickly migrated from hardware to software.^[3] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixels Full resolution (1400 × 1050 pixel, file size: 2. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixels Full resolution (1400 × 1050 pixel, file size: 2. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixels Full resolution (2816 × 2112 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixels Full resolution (2816 × 2112 pixel, file size: 1. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

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 other fanciful etymologies have been proposed. The Jargon File suggests that the word "crufty", from which "cruft" could be derived by backformation,^[1] was originally meant to apply to software so obsolete that "crusty" was being spelled with a long s, (ſ), a long-obsolete English letterform that looks like an f.^[3] 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. In etymology, the process of back-formation is the creation of a neologism by reinterpreting an earlier word as a compound and removing the spuriously supposed affixes. ... An italicized long s used in the word Congress in the United States Bill of Rights. ... A letterform, letter-form or letter form, is a term used especially in typography, paleography, calligraphy and epigraphy to mean a letters shape. ... A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed after the fact from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. ...

See also

Look up Cruft in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Bloatware
• Kipple
• Muda (Japanese term)

Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... Software bloat is a derogatory term used to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to use larger amounts of disk space, more CPU power and/or more RAM memory than older programs. ... Kipple is a term coined by science fiction author Philip K. Dick in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It refers to unwanted or useless junk that tends to reproduce itself. ... Muda (無駄) is a Japanese term for anything that is wasteful and doesnt add value. ...

References

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 230th day of the year (231st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

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.