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Martijn Pieters: 20 Years of Hacking the Web

• beggi 12y ago
  Now I really want to know the story behind the name 'monkey patching'
  • bch 12y ago
    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch (references to footnotes are from original site): The term monkey patch seems to have come from an earlier term, guerrilla patch, which referred to changing code sneakily – and possibly incompatibly with other such patches – at runtime.[2] The word guerrilla, homophonous with gorilla (or nearly so), became monkey, possibly to make the patch sound less intimidating.[2] An alternative etymology is that it refers to “monkeying about” with the code (messing with it).
    • beggi 12y ago
      Thanks :)
  • mjpieters 12y ago
    I've actually written about that on Programmers: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/235992/55400 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/235992/55400. The term was coined before Python Labs joined Zope Corp though (IIRC).
• collyw 12y ago
  >You can’t just give them a piece of code and say, “this solves your problem.” I prefer to be able to tell them why this solves the problem. Matrjin pedantically tried to close one of my SO questions (no one else voted to close it though). I consider him one of the overzealous moderators that bring the quality of SO down. Didn't help me solve a problem at all.