The Hacker's Dictionary

The Hacker's Dictionary
aka: The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10
3.7142857142857
(7 Reviews)
The Hacker's Dictionary by Unknown

Published:

1992

Pages:

493

ISBN:

0262680920

Downloads:

39,671

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The Hacker's Dictionary
aka: The Jargon File, Version 2.9.10
3.7142857142857
(7 Reviews)
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.

Book Excerpt

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 inten

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This is the version of the Jargon File which became the raw text for the New Hacker's Dictionary, 3rd Edition. It's not as easy to flip through as the physical book, but it's all here, the text, I mean. Too bad there isn't a table of contents to make it a little easier to look up word, or hypertext for the many references to other entries. Also missing are Guy Steele's cartoons. But hey! this is true to the original medium: an ascii text file! And it does have the well written interesting introductions.