| Cruft |
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In Hacker Jargon , cruft refers to extraneous or low-quality things in general, or software code in particular. The quality of being like cruft is '''cruftyness''' or '''cruftiness''', which could either refer to something that looks old or decrepit, or a unit of measurement of how old and decrepit something is. Specifically, 'cruft' can mean redundant, old, or improperly written Code which needs to be fixed, but tends to stick around. Large software projects invariably accumulate cruft. The concept can be compared to Philip K. Dick 's idea of Kipple . ''Cruft'' is sometimes said to be the software equivalent of Dust Bunnies . Due to the lack of a precise definition, cruft has also been used in many different contexts to describe code. For example, the FreeBSD handbook refers to stale Object Code as cruft, which simply implies the code has not been Recompiled following an edit. This can cause the BSD-equivalent of DLL Hell . Cruft may also refer to useless Junk or excess materials (including obsolete Computer Hardware ) that build up over time and have no value, including things collected from dumpsters, so Dumpster Diving is also called "crufting", and things collected from dumpsters are called crufted. In MIT slang, "cruft" has also come to refer to people who spend a lot of time at MIT even though they are no longer students there. In Web Design , "cruft" refers to text in the URL that reflects unimportant implementation details of the web site, and is not meaningful for identifying the page. File Extensions such as ''.php'', ''.html'', and ''.asp'' are examples of URL cruft. Some web designers promote the use of cruft-free URLs. ETYMOLOGY Although the origins of this term are uncertain, it is suggested that the term is derived from Harvard 's Cruft Hall, which was the Harvard Physics Department's radar lab during World War II . As late as the early 1990s , unused technical equipment could be seen stacked in front of Cruft Hall's windows. This image of "undiscarded technical clutter" quickly migrated from hardware to software, from which it was even more mind-bogglingly difficult to remove. The word "cruft" may also be evocative of the terms "crust" and "fluff", both of which may carry connotations of content that is at once extraneous, superfluous, inflexible, or superannuated. It has in fact been proposed that the word comes from spelling "crust" with a Medial "s" ("cruſt"). The proposed acronym "Commodity Residue Undergoing Fanciful Transit" is surely retroactive and a Backronym . EXTERNAL LINKS
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