Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Exchange, the programmers online cheat book, has a huge list of 30 programming jargons. These have emerged on the question-and-answer site over time. Some of them might be odd, but most of them are hilarious. Here are our top 20. You can check out the full list on his blog, Coding Horror.
1. Yoda Conditions
When a programmer writes the conditions for a piece of code in the opposite order for which you would expect to normally read them. (Instead of saying if(variable == constant), the code says if(constant == variable).)
2. Smug Report
A bug report submitted by a user who thinks he or she knows everything about a system, when he or she does not.
3. A duck
A feature added for the sole purpose of drawing attention to itself from management to be removed, avoiding unnecessary other changes in a product.
4. Pokémon Exception Handling
For when you just Gotta Catch ‘Em All.
5.Egyptian Brackets
You know the style of brackets where the opening brace goes on the end of the current line?
We used to refer to this style of brackets as “Egyptian brackets”. Why? Compare the position of the brackets with the hands in the picture.
6. Refuctoring
Taking a well-designed piece of code and, through a small series of changes, making it completely unmaintainable for anyone other than yourself.
7. Heisenbug
A play on “Heisenberg,” a principle in quantum mechanics, a Heisenbug is a bug that disappears or alters its characteristics when an attempt is made to study it.
8. Jimmy
A generalized name for a clueless or new developer.
9. Higgs Bugson
Another bug based on a physics phenomenon, a Higgs Bugson is a bug that’s hypothetically predicted to exist based on other conditions, but is difficult to produce.
10. Unicorny
A feature so early in its planning stages that it might as well be imaginary.
11. Hindenbug
A catastrophic, data-destroying bug.
12. Fear-driven development
When project management adds more pressure, such as by firing engineers.
13. Hydra
A bug that, when an attempt to fix is made, introduces two new bugs. It’s a bug that cannot be fixed.
14. Common Law Feature
A bug that has existed for so long that it is considered a feature.
15. Loch Ness Monster bug
A bug that has only been spotted by one person.
16. Rubberducking
Talking with other engineers to solve a problem.
17. Banana banana banana
Placeholder text in code that hasn’t been implemented yet.
18. Reality 101 failure
Creating a program that does exactly what was asked, but the problem it’s trying to solve was misunderstood and the program is basically useless.
19. Jenga code
The whole program collapses once you alter a block of code.
20. Mad Girlfriend Bug
When you see something strange happening, but the software is telling you everything is fine.
Image Source: Dribbble