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-
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- 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.
-
-
-
-
-