joe code /joh' kohd`/ n.
1. Code that is overly tense and
unmaintainable. "Perl may be a handy
program, but if you look at the source, it's complete joe code."
2. Badly written, possibly buggy code.
Correspondents wishing to remain anonymous have fingered a
particular Joe at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and observed
that usage has drifted slightly; the original sobriquet `Joe
code' was intended in sense 1.
1994 update: This term has now generalized to `<name>
code', used to designate code with distinct characteristics
traceable to its author. "This section doesn't check for a NULL
return from malloc()! Oh. No wonder! It's Ed code!". Used most
often with a programmer who has left the shop and thus is a
convenient scapegoat for anything that is wrong with the
project.