elegant adj.
[common; from mathematical usage] Combining simplicity, power,
and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than
`clever', `winning', or even cuspy.
The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry, probably best known for his classic
children's book "The Little Prince", was also an aircraft
designer. He gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering
elegance when he said "A designer knows he has achieved
perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there
is nothing left to take away."
Node:elephantine, Next:elevator controller,
Previous:elegant, Up:= E =
elephantine adj.
Used of programs or systems that are both conspicuous hogs (owing perhaps to poor design founded on
brute force and
ignorance) and exceedingly hairy in source form. An elephantine program may
be functional and even friendly, but (as in the old joke about
being in bed with an elephant) it's tough to have around all the
same (and, like a pachyderm, difficult to maintain). In extreme
cases, hackers have been known to make trumpeting sounds or
perform expressive proboscatory mime at the mention of the
offending program. Usage: semi-humorous. Compare `has the
elephant nature' and the somewhat more pejorative monstrosity. See also second-system effect and baroque.
Node:elevator controller,
Next:elite, Previous:elephantine, Up:= E =
elevator controller n.
An archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like toaster (which superseded it). During one
period (1983-84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the C
standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a
really stupid, memory-limited computation environment. "You can't
require printf(3) to be part of the default runtime
library -- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?"
Elevator controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both
sides of several holy wars.