4 ms·
General jargon like foobar is not that far off in meaning from "unfinished software". I think it's possible there's not really a contradiction between the diff
by bandofthehawk 5mo ago
General jargon like foobar is not that far off in meaning from "unfinished software". I think it's possible there's not really a contradiction between the different sources. The "unfinished software" meaning in the NYT article might have just been an example of one possible use of a more general nonsense word.
- qsera 5mo agoIsn't it supposed to be fubar? fucked up beyond any recognition?
- atoav 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
- ChrisClark 5mo agonot in code, the tradition has been two words actually, foo and bar
- dahart 5mo agoYes that’s the original spelling & meaning. But using the spellings foobar, foo, bar, and sometimes baz, have been used for decades in programming as examples, temporary names, stand-ins etc. I just assumed that spelling it foo was meant to distance it from the curse word slightly while simultaneously making the pronunciation more clear (i.e. foo not fuh); foo just makes a good nonsense word.
- breatheoften 5mo agoI only just realized the z in foobaz stood for zork
- wang_li 5mo agoThey are called metasyntactic variables and there’s a handful of them for English, but also standard ones in other language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable
- m463 5mo ago> foo not fuh not to be confused with: fuh not pho
- Supermancho 5mo agoNote the Etymology of "Foo" RFC http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html
- aaron695 5mo ago[dead]