Scene Storm

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Scene Storm / Scene Storm - Volume 1.iso / coding / asm_reference / computing_guide < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-09-06 | 37KB | 842 lines

THE MONDAY MORNING AMIGA COMPUTING GUIDE FOR HUNG-OVER PROGRAMMERS! =================================================================== Apologies to 'Practical Computing' circa 1983 from which came the original idea for this file. The original article (copyright IPC business publica- tions) is avaiable from Practical Computing's back numbers department, ask for Volume 6 Issue 3 (dated March 1983), and turn to page 107. Back numbers obtainable (as far as I know) from: IPC Business Press (Sales & Distribution) LTD Quadrant House The Quadrant Sutton SURREY SM2 5AS The original by Chris Naylor was biased primarily toward corporate DP de- partment staff, and I thought it was about time to create an Amiga-specific version with a few plugs for assembler progrmmers, and snide comments about the rest. Any person reading the original Monday Morning Guide will find significant changes to many definitions, many omissions, and many entries previously either thought unworthy of inclusion or simply not existing be- cause the technology wasn't up to it back then. On the occasions when the definitions tally, the above copyright acknowledgement holds, and the persis- tent reader will note that much effort has been made to extend the old defi- nitions to take account of progress, the prejudices of the intended reader- ship, and demographic and social changes in the world of computing at large. Changes such as the rise of the Heineken-powered FORTRAN programmer, the emergence of the sinister political power bloc known as C programmers, whose intentions have yet to become manifest, and the invasion of previously sacred territory by civil servants, social workers, nut-cutlet bearded Guard- ian readers and other quiche eaters who have no business being in a technolo- gical environment more suited to REAL heroes. After all, you'd never find any quiche eater rebooting a mainframe operating system by hand-entering the en- tire binary code for the bootstrap via a front panel - now THERE'S real pro- gramming for you! T H E G U I D E ================================ 68000 : According to some fundamentalist Christian sects, the number of the beast. Well, how many religious fundamen- talists do you know who can count? Actually, the guilty party implicated in many program deaths, particularly on Amiga 500s. 68010 : A faster 68000 that won't let you MOVE from SR without Guru'ing the Amiga. See 68000. 68020 : The 68000's big brother. Fast, complex, powerful and is at last becoming available cheaply. Eats Intel 80286's for breakfast, and with a maths chip in tandem can even embarrass a '386. See 68000. 68030 : The 68020's big brother, found in Amiga 3000s and even more juicy than the 68020. Makes Intel 80386's look like a joke. See 68020. 68040 : A super-beastly chip now finding its way into rich coders' Amigas (mostly A3000s) which makes Intel 80486's look sad. Actually it makes lots of other chips look sad in the same way that Arnold Schwarzenegger makes most other men look puny. However, the 68040 is more communicative and probab- ly more intelligent... Ada : A language owing its name to Countess Ada Lovelace, who was the sponsor of Charles Babbage in his forlorn attempt to build the Amiga for Queen Victoria, and also reputedly the world's first programmer. If she knew that the U.S. Department of Defense were to name this language after her 150 years later, she would have taken up embroidery like most other Victorian women, rather than face having this intellectual sewage named after her. A truly AWFUL language developed by committee, thankfully NOT available on the Amiga. Pray that HiSoft don't write an Ada compi- ler for the Amiga in a fit of pique, as the manual will fill a 40 meg hard disc... See COBOL. Address : In theory, a unique number allowing the contents of any location in memory to be accessed directly provided that the value of this number is known in some way. In reality the address of a memory location turns out to be equal to A+N, where A is the address that you thought it was, and N is a random displacement to be added onto A. A situa- tion made worse for some programmers by the existence of flash addressing modes on the 68000. See Addressing Mode. Addressing Mode : Any of several means provided by a particular processor by which memory addresses can be created without having to know too much about the actual addresses themselves, on the basis that the data required to form the address must be SOMEWHERE in the processor's registers... AI : An acronym for Artificial Intelligence. What you wish the damn machine had after the 83rd Guru Meditation of the day. Since there's little enough of the other sort of in- telligence around (go to any town hall social services department or Whitehall for proof of this) AI is needed desperately to get the rest of us out of the shit. Algorithm : Almost in danger of being regarded as a social-worker and civil servant type word, it's a posh way of describing the method you chose to solve your problem. Since your choice was wrong, and it didn't work, it's time to become a social worker or a civil servant and get paid for not working. Amiga : A cruel mistress who treats her slaves with total and utter disdain. Still, it's better than buying an ST... AmigaDOS : What you ended up with because you couldn't afford a UNIX machine. In some ways, be thankful. At other times, cry. See BCPL, C, UNIX. ASCII : A method of assigning numbers to the characters of the alphabet so that your computer can do something other than piddle around with numbers all the time. About the only prevailing standard in the whole of the computer industry, unless you're IBM, in which case how the hell did you get hold of this file and how the hell can you read it? See EBCDIC. Assembler : The language that you end up writing most of your soft- ware in as a result of the failure of C compilers to let you to do all of the evil things that you want to with the machine. Atari ST : An early attempt to introduce 68000 chips to coders. Now used in pretentious modern-art sculptures (STHenge?) and as an expensive means of shoring up tables with legs of uneven length. Back Up : In theory, what you should do with all important files. In practice, the direction you go in when your girlfriend mocks your prowess and demands something more from life. BASIC : A high-level language supposedly allowing complete be- ginners to excrete all over vital system data structures and pretend that they're real programmers as a result. The only language available where programs take longer to execute than they take to write. BCPL : Supposed to stand for British Computer Programming Lan- guage. This is effectively C's grandfather (via an inter- mediate product called B), and was the work of Brian W. Kernighan (eventually to found C and UNIX). Those who are familiar with its use in writing large parts of AmigaDOS have renamed it Bastard Computer Programming Language as a direct result of the headaches lurking within AmigaDOS should anyone wish to discover them. See AmigaDOS, C, UNIX Binary : A number system so awful that only a computer would use it. The space occupied by a binary number grows exponen- tially with the size of the number. If you don't believe this, I defy anyone to fit the binary representation of Avogadro's Number onto a single sheet of A4 paper. Bit : The tiniest possible piece of information on a computer. Takes either the value zero or one. A bit is rather like an ant:one on its own is as much use as a fishnet condom but put millions of them together and the fun begins. The word 'Bit' is actually a shortened form of Binary Digit, which just about sums it up really. See Binary, Byte, K (Kilobyte), Megabyte, Memory. Blitter : A truly sophisticated piece of hardware ideally suited to trashing Copper lists and munging graphics and sound sample data. In the right hands can cause as much havoc as an SS-18 ICBM. Branch : A kind of jump that doesn't require knowledge of where you are and where you want to go, rather where you are and how far away in either direction you want to go. But since it never lets you go far enough away to escape the bugs in this piece of code, you end up using Jump instead because your chance of escape is significantly improved. Bug : A member of the class Insecta. Because of this, it is present in huge populations worldwide. Computer memories are its favourite habitat. Unaffected by CFCs, PCBs, or greenhouse gases, and thus set to take over the world at any moment. Impervious to nuclear attack (and probably capable of launching one in a fit of pique if the truth be known...). Busy : The normal state of the system when you have a super-high priority task waiting to run. Also the name given to any of the flags used by various pieces of hardware to tell your programs to take a hike while they indulge themsel- ves in activities totally unrelated to your requirements. Byte : Eight bits, treated as a single unit. Again, not very helpful on its own, but lots of them can make your day. By the time you have millions of them bolted onto your Amiga, you're ready to hack into the NSA encryption com- puters, write the ultimate megagame and rack up fifty trillion points on Revenge of the Mutant Hamsters. See Bit, K (Kilobyte) ,Megabyte, Memory. C : The language used by UNIX hacks because they're too lazy to learn 68000 assembler. A sort of high-ish level lan- guage that pretends to give the same control over the machine as assembler, while imposing something approach- ing structured methods upon programming. As it tries to be all things to all men, many C implementations are consequently something of a dog's breakfast. Amiga C is like a microwaved pie-hot in parts. Cast : In C, a means of changing the type of data within your program without using explicit type-conversion routines. The fact that those routines supplied by the compiler don't work means that you still have to write your own. In other languages, done the hard way anyway, so why did you bother? CIA : Where to get useful information such as the addresses of ex-Cambridge University old boys and SS-18 missile silo locations. Also the premier means employed by the Amiga to vomit all over the user's comprehension of keyboard and serial port handling. COBOL : A job-security enhancement suite for accountants and lawyers. The programming equivalent of a party political broadcast. Available on Amigas for the price of a CRAY XMP cluster for the bed-wetters among you. Writing COBOL programs takes longer than hand-writing a Gutenberg Bible using quill and ink, and a COBOL program is almost iden- tical in appearance to one when listed. An attempt to perpetrate even greater computing sins is now available, called Ada. If you have to blaspheme, I urge you to do it in COBOL. See Ada. Code : In theory, any text or data that can be executed as a program or assembled/compiled into a program. In prac- tice, given the state of some language compilers, it can be anything from a valid 68000 assembler text file to a translation of the Bhavagad Gita into Serbo-Croat. See Compiler, then Bug in that order. Compiler : A program that purports to take any other program that is written in a high-level language, and generate a com- plete working machine language version. What it actually does is pore over your source code several times, gene- rate a large set of pseudo-random numbers that just hap- pen to be executable on your machine (bearing no relation to your source code), and then hangs the machine. Condition : If you're a doctor, another name for ailment. If you're a programmer, usually similar in definition when applied to the logic of your code. Otherwise the reason why a piece of code either goes one way or the other, and in both in- stances usually leads to a crash. See IF, Jump. Copper : A truly sophisticated piece of hardware that controls the Amiga display, capable of ordering the blitter to trash its own Copper lists without intervention from the 68000. A must for Acid House demo writers. Copper List : A list of instructions to control the Copper. A free-fire zone for the 68000 and the blitter. Copy-Protection : A mechanism for preventing legitimate users from backing up software for which they have paid huge sums of money, while allowing pirates to mass-produce their own versions on the cheap. CPU : An acronym for certain X-certificate activities which can be found advertised in any contact magazine. Cracking : The process of devising ingenious ways of avoiding the copy-protection mechanisms built into expensive soft- ware, before finding out that the copy-protection mech- anism doesn't really work after all and that your effort was wasted. Quickly becoming a religion among ex-hippies and wastrel teenagers the world over. Data : In theory, an organised set of numbers to which a high- level meaning has been ascribed. In practice, whatever is currently being trashed by your program. Database : A large collection of data. Incapable of fitting into memory in its entirety in one go, despite the fact that that is what you usually want. Database : A huge program incapable of fitting into memory in its Manager entirety in one go, and definitely incapable of fitting into memory alongside the data it's supposed to be mana- ging. Not that you'd want it to anyway. Turns your Amiga into a glorified Filofax, except that a Filofax is more secure, more portable and less likely to induce radia- tion-moderated cancers. Data Structure : In theory, a means used by C programmers (and copied by GenAm for 68000 assembler programmers) of ensuring that blocks of data can be treated as a unit, even if these blocks are made up of disparate pieces of disparate data types. In practice, a huge block of data needed by the system (and your program) about which no documentation exists ANYWHERE, thus ensuring regular visits by the Guru for the foreseeable future. See Type, then Bug in that order. Debug : Remove bugs from the system. Because bugs are unaffected by CFCs, etc., this is a task best suited to omnipotent beings and major deities. Debugger : A program that purports to debug your programs. If ever it succeeds, you will have founded a new religion. Any other time, a debugger is, in the right hands, a classic means of truly peeing all over the system. Decryption : To be attempted only when access to garlic and a cruci- fix is guaranteed. Device : A shaped plastic object for fetishists. Also a means of truly confusing the operating system. Disc : Or, if you're American, Disk. Comes in two types, floppy and hard. Just about sums it up, really. See Floppy Disc, Hard Disc. DMA : NOT the backing group for Suzanne Vega, but a method of memory access arbitration (another social worker word again) that allows different parts of the system to read and write to memory in a way that prevents them clashing with each other. Done on the Amiga in a quite simple yet sneaky way, but since all the timings are related to the video display, it helps if you can mend colour TVs when trying to understand it. EBCDIC : Another standard character set representation, this time of IBM parentage (which says it all). Incompatible with ASCII, only found in use on IBM mainframes and loved only by Big Blue sycophants. See ASCII, IBM. Encoding : A means of making data incomprehensible to unauthorised persons, in such a way that the original can be recovered provided that you made an unencoded back-up earlier. Encryption : A means of making data incomprehensible to unauthorised persons in such a way that even a pristine back-up of the original leaves you none the wiser. Exec : The heart of the machine. Diagnosis:advanced myocardial infarction. Designed to persuade UNIX hacks that they were right all along. A multitasking operating system needing a Ph.D to comprehend fully, and written in some places by tea-party chimps. Execute : A command applicable both to AmigaDOS and to the prats who ceased publication of version 1 of the Hardware Ref- erence Manual two years before version 2 was ready, and thus allowed Abacus to send their share value into orbit as they had the only viable alternative publication. Expansion : The process by which the put-upon Amiga programmer with a large wallet adds to the machine what should have been there already (such as 8 megs of RAM and a 40 meg hard disc). See Hard Disc, Megabyte, Memory. File : A collection of data written to disk using an identify- ing label which you promptly forget, and then write all over next time you turn on the machine. Firmware : Software in a state of arousal. Floppy Disc : The name given to a fairly rigid form of disc for his- torical reasons. Is slow to use, stores relatively small amounts of data but is used because it's cheap compared to hard discs and you can send it through the post to infect your friends' computers with new viruses. See Hard Disc. FORTRAN : A high-level language designed to allow scientists and engineers to crash the system without calling in any outside assistance. Used to write operating systems for cruise missiles and NSA encryption computers, with all the expected consequences. FORTRAN programmers are the American Football jocks and rugger-buggers of the com- puting world, capable of drinking even assembler pro- grammers under the table. Function : What your programs usually don't do. Also the only way in which a C programmer can do anything until freed by a rapid conversion to assembler. This may account for the awful habits of C programmers in public lavatories. Gadget : Another object for fetishists. Usually provided by a program to allow naive users to mung Copper lists and digitally urinate all over system data structures, all without the need of experienced programming assistance. GO TO : An imperative used to banish PASCAL programmers from a copyparty. Guru Meditation : The ultimate test of sainthood. An endless source of material for Trivial Pursuit questions and writers of paperback SF novels. Regular exposure to a guru medita- tion is a neat way of experiencing the effects of some recreational pharmaceuticals without actually poisoning your body, thus allowing you to pick your favourite brand of brain bender before committing yourself to the real thing. Unfortunately, many of the substances thus mimic- ked are fatal in small doses, and the Guru won't repro- duce the effects of an overdose... Hacking : Computer burglary. So-called because this is the noise made by managers of banking and military computers upon finding that their security system has been bypassed by a six-year-old using information cribbed from a back number of 'Byte' magazine. It is now possible to do this By Appointment to the Royal Family. WARNING : As of 1989, anyone caught indulging in this pastime will be treated to a spell of mailbag sewing & other diversions in the honeymoon suite of the Brixton Hilton. Also, your equipment will be impounded (ouch!) and you'll find yourself under surveillance for much of the rest of your days as a certified Public Enemy. So don't get caught (sorry, Chief Constable, I meant don't do it)... See Modem, Password. Hard Disc : An expensive but fast storage device that also stores a decent amount of data in one go. Should you try to send one through the post, though, the results will be highly amusing. See Floppy Disc. Hardware : That part of the system that ends up in pieces on the floor when you hit it with a lump hammer. The ultimate fate of computer systems worldwide, especially after a major infestation of bugs. HEX : A number system invented by an Armenian mathematician during a particularly dull Halloween. Assumes that users have sixteen fingers and thumbs in total. Housekeeping : To most of us, the dreary task of reorganising files on disc (or disk if you're American). To a certain class of fetishist, something performed while wearing a frilly apron and fishnet stockings. The latter definition is the preferred one among trendy vicars and high court judges everywhere. Luncheon vouchers, anyone? IBM : THE largest computer company of all time. Known colloq- uially as Big Blue (after its corporate colour), it is best known for being gigantic in size, immensely rich & totally devoid of decent ideas. Responsible for the now worldwide PC standard and thus forever to be cursed by those who wanted to see a DECENT computing standard take a hold. Also suppliers of more mainframes than just about anyone else, including all the ones that are easy for a hacker to gain access to. IBM PC : Or PC for short, now that there are more Taiwanese com- panies making clones of the thing than there are Acorn Archimedes owners. Often an excuse for junior managers to look busy while all the time they're really eyeing up the latest digitised hard-code porn pix from Sweden on the boss' Super VGA screen. Icon : Take your pick from the Virgin Mary, Elvis, or any work of art stolen from the Russian Orthodox Church. Also a pretty graphic device intended to indicate whether a file is a program or a data file, what sort of things can be done with it, and how to do them. In the hands of assembler programmers, usually end up resembling art deco representations of primate genitalia of some species or other. IF : One of a class of wish-fulfilment statements. Usually implies that the program doesn't know what it's doing or where it's going to, so use Jump instead. Interrupt : Hang on a minute... If you ended up back here, see Return. Intuition : A graphic interface supposedly comprehensible to new- age earth mothers and crystal wearers. Actually one of the premier means of humiliating ST programmers avail- able to the Amiga coder. Iteration : See Iteration, and keep doing so until you drop. Jump : Either an instruction allowing your program to go to some weird place in memory, forgetting where it came from, and thus getting totally lost, or what the screen display does when using the blitter in the approved man- ner (i.e., for munging Copper lists). See Interrupt. K (Kilobyte) : In SI units, the Kilo (K) prefix signals that you have one thousand of whatever is being measured. On computers it's actually 1,024 because that's the closest power of two to 1,000 and computers work in binary because they're thick. So 1K of memory is actually 1,024 bytes, not 1,000 bytes. By the time the you've reached the 512K on the standard Amiga 500, those extra 24 bytes per thousand are pretty damned useful because you'd run out of memory even quicker without them. 512K sounds like a lot until you begin writing Acid House demos... See Binary, Bit, Byte, Megabyte, Memory. Label : An identifier used to signal a point in your code that is the intended destination for a Jump instruction or a branch caused by an IF-type instruction or is the point where a data structure exists. Usually ignored totally at runtime. Library : Where you get your Amiga manuals from because they are too expensive to buy. Manual : Means that you do it by hand. Also a work of literature with a price tag matching a Gutenberg Bible, but with inferior intellectual content. Usually written in one of several dialects of Californian, a language due to go the same way as Latin (and deservedly so). Megabyte : In SI units, the Mega (M) prefix means that you have one million of whatever it is you're measuring. Again, since computers use binary, one Megabyte is actually 1024K, and this works out at 1,048,576 bytes (yes, I used a calcula- tor!). This means you're getting approximately an extra 48K on top of the million bytes for every megabyte you add onto your machine. Quite a bargain really, given the price of RAM chips. Also known as megs, as in 8 meg ex- pansion, something all Amiga owners hanker after but are rarely rich enough to buy. See Binary, Bit, Byte, K (Kilobyte), Memory. Memory : A free-fire zone for programs and data. A no-go area. A real-life adventure game arena, especially for assembler programmers without decent debuggers. Amiga programmers NEVER have enough of it. More can be added, but only if you can afford a Ferrari or a house in Mayfair. See Expansion. Menu : Probably the only thing provided by a program that does not allow users to screw up the system's integrity. A great deal of research is currently being done on how to allow menus to exceed the system mangling capacity of gadgets and requesters. Methodology : A social-worker type word meaning 'how you did it'. This and many other similar words occur frequently in manuals written by PASCAL programmers and dissertations by half- wit social services directors. Usually points to the presence of a quiche eater. See Quiche Eater, Structured. Modem : Shortened form of Modulator/Demodulator. A device allow- ing Amiga programmers with fat wallets and a telephone to mount campaigns of world domination. Also allows poorer Amiga programmers to create their own Swiss bank accounts to finance that 8 meg expansion and 68040 accelerator board. See Hacking. Mouse : Incontinent creature often seen trawling through the rem- nants of copyparty pizzas. Used primarily as a means of making Sinclair owners feel inadequate. Mouse Mat : A small piece of expensive material used as a waste dump for the remnants of copyparty pizzas prior to allowing your mouse to trawl through them. Multitasking : The art of pretending to perform several jobs at once, while actually performing at most one, and usually none. The perfect job decription for civil servants the world over. Object (Code) : In theory, a collection of numbers which when decoded represent your program after being assembled or compiled. In practice, a one-time pad of pseudo-random numbers that just HAPPEN to be executable by the machine, and bears no semantic resemblance to your original program. See Semantic and Source (code). PASCAL : A structured language supposedly allowing the implemen- tation of mathematically rigorous design methodologies and because such phrases are used by PASCAL programmers on a regular basis, the favoured choice of bleeding- heart liberal social workers who want to pretend that they are computer-literate. Playing 'Spot the Pascal Programmer' is a favourite sport among rugby-playing FORTRAN programmers after a night on the pop, as is 'Super-Glue the Pascal Programmer to the Truck Exhaust'. See Quiche Eater. Password : A means of enforcing data security by means of a string of characters that you can't remember, and hence write down on a piece of paper next to your machine for all & sundry to peruse at leisure. Often encountered during a hacking session. The password is usually 'FRED'. See Hacking, Modem. Pointer : A sort of dog blessed with the magical ability to know where things went to. In computing, the only thing that knew for certain where the data went before you lost it. In assembler, any address, hence capable of being total- ly misleading. In C, forced to point to objects of a given type, and hence only mildly misleading unless you perform casting, in which case you might as well be us- ing assembler... See Address. Port : On the Amiga, a means by which lots of different programs all running together in memory can talk to each other. In practice, responsible for massive hangovers after excess- ive exposure. Both the data structure and the drink are sickly concoctions... Programmer : A kind of cerebral masochist who seems eternally to be doing some sort of penance to the uninitiated. Has been given the awesome (and often futile) task of understan- ding the machine being worked on. A pitiful creature, to be avoided in public unless protected by a crucifix and some fresh garlic. Usually has 'Unclean' tattooed on the forehead. What programmers have done to deserve such a fate remains a mystery, but I'm sure it has a lot to do with the creation of the first COBOL compiler... Quiche Eater : Anyone who pretends to be a programmer by writing data- base management software in PASCAL. Usually seen occupy- ing vegetarian restaurants reading the Guardian between nut cutlet courses and pontificating about lack of stan- dardisation between assembly languages. A complete tit. RAM : A verb describing what programmers do to a computer (in most cases using a motor vehicle) when bugs inhabit the memory. Recursion : See Recursion. I know that this is an old definition, but not even a Californian COBOL programmer with social work- er parents has bettered this. Register : What the full implications of your programming errors have so far failed to do. You should drink less. Also part of the 68000 and other chips, which is why the mere mention of this word in public will bring upon your head the wrath of innumerate religious fundamentalists every- where. See 68000. Requester : In theory, a pretty graphical device allowing programs to inform users that lots of options for screwing the system are available at the click of a mouse button. In practice the thing immediately preceding a Guru Meditation. One of the most ingenious ways yet devised of allowing naive users to render the system ga-ga while pretending to be doing something useful, often with delayed results. Resource : A motley collection of data structures and code sections lumped together for no other reason than that it seemed like a good idea to throw them together when they were first brought into existence, and that they might get on well with each other. In the case of the CIA resource on the Amiga, this proved to have the same lively effects as lumping together Shi'ite fundamentalists and Hasidic Jews in the same tenement block did in parts of Bradford. Return : An instruction that makes your program go back to some- where where it thinks that it came from. This may not be where it actually came from, but if you're writing in C, who really cares? See Interrupt, but only if you have tried to already. ROM : A collection of chips whose job is to confuse you into thinking that software actually exists. Often the only evidence that the machine does more than sit on your desk incrementing the counters on your electricity meter. Semantic : A social-worker type word which means roughly the same as 'meaning' itself. The only problem with this is that philosophers the world over can't agree what is actually meant by the word 'meaning', and so use the word 'seman- tic' to refer to their own pet concept. Used in the world of computers to imply the relationship between what the program actually DOES and what you intended it to do, a relationship that rarely runs smoothly. See Function, then Bug in that order. Software : That part of the system which doesn't really exist, you only think it does. Well, can you hit it with a lump hammer? Source (Code) : What you spent large amounts of time typing in, and then forgot to back up immediately prior to the moment when the system trashed it. In theory bearing some relation to Object Code, but in practice not as often as is desired by the programmer. Sprite : A graphic image managed directly by hardware on the Amiga which is in theory under the programmer's complete con- trol. But because of the awkward register allocation, the programmer can soon lose his grip on reality attempting sprite handling. The relationship between Amiga sprites & those of supernatural origin may not be purely coinciden- tal... Yet another graphic feature that tends to be misused by a certain class of coder who thinks that displaying images of primate genitalia on other people's screens is funny. See Icon. Stack : A sort of inflatable waste-disposal area for unwanted data. Also an adjective describing the usual appearance of an Amiga coder's desk. Structured : In theory, means that you've thought about what you want to write before you do it. In practice, means that you spend more time writing papers containing words such as 'methodology' and 'rationale' than you do writing any decent programs. Task : A minor utterance of disapproval heard in the company of Sloane Rangers. Type : In theory, a means of ensuring that certain data items do not get mistaken for other data items, particularly when they are intended to be treated differently. In practice on the Amiga, type is always WORD unless you're using a pointer, in which case the recommended way of trashing the system is to declare your type as ULONG. See Structured, then Bug in that order. UART : A term of abuse in the wrong hands. Actually stands for Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter, and I defy anyone to say that without pausing even when sober. A piece of hardware that allows Amigas to be hooked up to modems and serial printers, and hence allows wicked pro- grammers to perpetrate all manner of evil deeds within systems all over the world. See Hacking, Modem UNIX : The first real (as opposed to pretend) multitasking op- erating system written. As easy to understand as the original Sanskrit manuscript for the Mahabharat. Took 11 years for a team of Ph.D's to debug. Since the wri- ters of AmigaDOS tried to do the same thing in 18 months Exec is what you ended up with. Written in C (and often it shows), UNIX is now available on top-end Amigas for a suitably huge fee. Virus : A program that copies itself all over your disks, in a way guaranteed to ensure its reappearance, and having done so, then performs the computing equivalent of a sexual offence within the system. Usually the only type of program guaranteed to work first time. VOID : In C, means that you get nothing back regardless of what you put in. Also describes the space between the ears of COBOL programmers. Wait : What your programs usually have to do while the system tries to un-mung itself after a rogue blitter usage. The means by which multitasking operating systems keep up the pretence that your machine is doing several things at once while actually doing something totally unrelated to any of the tasks you thought were assigned to it. Workbench : Available from Black & Decker for a reasonable price. A guaranteed mechanism for the generation of 'Software Error' requesters and Guru Meditations. WorkBench 2 : A version of Workbench that allows the system to generate 'Software Error' requesters and Guru Meditations in a more aesthetically pleasing way. Also a means by which a large number of coders were suckered into dumping perfectly ser- viceable 1.3 Amigas only to find that the new ones still hadn't been properly debugged (drive click! HAH!) & were now incapable of running many favourite old programs.