Ada n.
A Pascal-descended language that
was at one time made mandatory for Department of Defense software
projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in
observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might
expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; designed by
committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous,
multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description wss "The
PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and
inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. Ada
Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first
programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design
of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would
almost certainly blanch at the use to which her name has latterly
been put; the kindest thing that has been said about it is that
there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from
inside its vast, elephantine
bulk.
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address harvester n.
A robot that searches web pages and/or filters netnews traffic
looking for valid email addresses. Some address harvesters are
benign, used only for compiling address directories. Most,
unfortunately, are run by miscreants compiling address lists to
spam. Address harvesters can be foiled
by a teergrube.