real adj.
Not simulated. Often used as a specific antonym to virtual in any of its jargon senses.
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real estate n.
May be used for any critical resource measured in units of
area. Most frequently used of `chip real estate', the area
available for logic on the surface of an integrated circuit (see
also nanoacre). May also be used
of floor space in a dinosaur
pen, or even space on a crowded desktop (whether physical
or electronic).
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real hack n.
A crock. This is sometimes used
affectionately; see hack.
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real operating system n.
The sort the speaker is used to. People from the BSDophilic
academic community are likely to issue comments like "System V?
Why don't you use a real operating system?", people from
the commercial/industrial Unix sector are known to complain "BSD?
Why don't you use a real operating system?", and people
from IBM object "Unix? Why don't you use a real
operating system?" Only MS-DOS is
universally considered unreal. See holy
wars, religious
issues, proprietary,
Get a real
computer!
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Real Programmer n.
[indirectly, from the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"] A
particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant
attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified
by experience. The archetypal `Real Programmer' likes to program
on the bare metal and is very
good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he
has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a
debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for
wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't
been bummed into a state of tenseness just short of rupture. Real
Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was
hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to
understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that
were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really
happy unless doing so. A Real Programmer's code can awe with its
fiendish brilliance, even as its crockishness appalls. Real
Programmers live on junk food and coffee, hang line-printer art
on their walls, and terrify the crap out of other programmers --
because someday, somebody else might have to try to understand
their code in order to change it. Their successors generally
consider it a Good Thing that
there aren't many Real Programmers around any more. For a famous
(and somewhat more positive) portrait of a Real Programmer, see
"The Story of Mel"
in Appendix A. The term itself was popularized by a 1983
Datamation article "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" by Ed
Post, still circulating on Usenet and Internet in on-line form.
You can browse "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal" from the
Datamation home page http://www.datamation.com.