On Monday, 07/06/2009 at 09:44 EDT, "Gentry, Stephen" <[email protected]> wrote: > I worked with a young lady, fresh out of college, a few years ago who is > a very sharp programmer. Apparently, foobar, fubar, etc, were used > frequently in her class examples, to the point that she included them as > variables in programs she wrote for the company. A senior programmer > was helping her one day and noticed all of the foobar variables. He > asked her if she knew what it meant and she truthfully had no idea. He > explained it to her, she turned a few shades of red and quit using the > variable. I honestly believe she had no idea what it meant. She also > couldn't understand how us "grey beards" could abbreviate variables down > to 8 characters. She had a hard time reading some of our programs. > Ah, the innocence of youth.
>From Lewis Carroll's *Through the Looking Glass*: "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't ? till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean ? neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master ? that's all." Anyone wanting to research the alleged origins of FOOBAR or the acronym FUBAR, or any of its component words, need only Google it. You'll find plenty of opinions and references. Can we let this one go now? Please? Thanks. Alan Altmark Speaking for himself ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
