crayon n.
1. Someone who works on Cray supercomputers. More
specifically, it implies a programmer, probably of the CDC ilk,
probably male, and almost certainly wearing a tie (irrespective
of gender). Systems types who have a Unix background tend not to
be described as crayons. 2. Formerly, anyone who worked for Cray
Research; since the buyout by SGI, anyone they inherited from
Cray. 3. A computron (sense 2)
that participates only in number-crunching. 4. A unit of
computational power equal to that of a single Cray-1. There is a
standard joke about this usage that derives from an old Crayola
crayon promotional gimmick: When you buy 64 crayons you get a
free sharpener.
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creationism n.
The (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can
be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked
out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally
talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly
that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory
interaction between one (or at most a small handful of)
exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population --
and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models
beloved of management, they are
generally ignored.