Knuth, Satan, George Bush and Britney Spears help programmers write their code
The Website Krugle.org, which lets programmers search through computer code that others have written and made available, released a list of the non-tech terms most commonly included in these programs. The most popular term: “Knuth,” a reference Donald Knuth, a famous computer scientist. It makes sense that techies would want to honor one of their heroes. But then it gets weird. Second place, according to Krugle, went to the term “Satan,” which we hope is a joke rather than a reference to another hero. Third place went to “George Bush,” which edged out “Britney Spears.” “Fidel Castro” came in fifth. (Our own search of their site produced a slightly different order, but in each case there were hundreds and in some cases thousands of programs that contained the terms.)
These words are the titles that programmers give pieces of their software, say a snippet of code that takes the text from a field on a Web site and enters it into a database, or notes that they include for kicks, Mel Badgett, Krugle’s vice president of product marketing, tells the Business Technology Blog. They don’t have any impact on how a particular program runs and they’re visible only to other programmers who know where to look. But they do offer a window into programmers’ minds, Badgett tells us.
For example, one programmer included this note in his code: “I wanna thank www.desktopgirls.com for their very good Britney Spears pics that let me be calm while doing this project!?”
“This is an inside joke” for developers, Badgett says. Hiding these terms in their code “is like reality TV for these guys.”
Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,Share This