Introduction

Introduction
**************

This document is a collection of slang terms used by various
subcultures of computer hackers.  Though some technical material is
included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary;
what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for
fun, social communication, and technical debate.

The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of
subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared
experiences, shared roots, and shared values.  It has its own myths,
heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams.  Because
hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define
themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits,
it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional
culture less than 40 years old.

As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold
their culture together -- it helps hackers recognize each other's
places in the community and expresses shared values and experiences.
Also as usual, *not* knowing the slang (or using it inappropriately)
defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or (worst of all in hackish
vocabulary) possibly even a {suit}.  All human cultures use slang in
this threefold way -- as a tool of communication, and of inclusion,
and of exclusion.

Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps
in the slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard
to detect in most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are
code for shared states of *consciousness*.  There is a whole range of
altered states and problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level
hacking which don't fit into conventional linguistic reality any
better than a Coltrane solo or one of Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil'
compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers), and hacker slang
encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways.  As a simple example,
take the distinction between a {kluge} and an {elegant} solution, and
the differing connotations attached to each.  The distinction is not
only of engineering significance; it reaches right back into the
nature of the generative processes in program design and asserts
something important about two different kinds of relationship between
the hacker and the hack.  Hacker slang is unusually rich in
implications of this kind, of overtones and undertones that illuminate
the hackish psyche.

But there is more.  Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very
conscious and inventive in their use of language.  These traits seem
to be common in young children, but the conformity-enforcing machine
we are pleased to call an educational system bludgeons them out of
most of us before adolescence.  Thus, linguistic invention in most
subcultures of the modern West is a halting and largely unconscious
process.  Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and use as a
game to be played for conscious pleasure.  Their inventions thus
display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of
language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful
intelligence.  Further, the electronic media which knit them together
are fluid, `hot' connections, well adapted to both the dissemination
of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak and superannuated
specimens.  The results of this process give us perhaps a uniquely
intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action.

Hackish slang also challenges some common linguistic and
anthropological assumptions.  For example, it has recently become
fashionable to speak of `low-context' versus `high-context'
communication, and to classify cultures by the preferred context level
of their languages and art forms.  It is usually claimed that
low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and
completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures
which value logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by
contrast, high-context communication (elliptical, emotive,
nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded) is associated with cultures
which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation, and tradition.  What
then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around extremely
low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily
"low-context" values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context
slang style?

The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a
compilation of hacker slang a particularly effective window into the
surrounding culture -- and, in fact, this one is the latest version of
an evolving compilation called the `Jargon File', maintained by
hackers themselves for over 15 years.  This one (like its ancestors)
is primarily a lexicon, but also includes `topic entries' which
collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture that
would be awkward to try to subsume under individual entries.

Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that
the material be enjoyable to browse.  Even a complete outsider should
find at least a chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is
amusingly thought-provoking.  But it is also true that hackers use
humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes combative statements about
what they feel.  Some of these entries reflect the views of opposing
sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this is
deliberate.  We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these
disputes; rather we have attempted to ensure that *everyone's* sacred
cows get gored, impartially.  Compromise is not particularly a hackish
virtue, but the honest presentation of divergent viewpoints is.

The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them.  We have not felt
it either necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too,
contribute flavor, and one of this document's major intended audiences
--- fledgling hackers already partway inside the culture -- will benefit
from them.

A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included
in Appendix A, {Hacker Folklore}. The `outside' reader's attention is
particularly directed to Appendix B, {A Portrait of J. Random Hacker}.
Appendix C, the {Bibliography}, lists some non-technical works which
have either influenced or described the hacker culture.

Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must
choose by action to join), one should not be surprised that the line
between description and influence can become more than a little
blurred.  Earlier versions of the Jargon File have played a central
role in spreading hacker language and the culture that goes with it to
successively larger populations, and we hope and expect that this one
will do likewise.

Of Slang, Jargon, and Techspeak
Revision History