This is a glorious compendium of arcane computer jargon, now in its third edition in print but continually updated online.
Indeed, The Jargon File website is the real home of the Hacker Dictionary, from which the book is merely a spin off. Here’s one of my favourite entries from the Dictionary, which gives a good flavour for why anyone should go rooting around in its pages:
cargo cult programming: n.
A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully understood (compare shotgun debugging, voodoo programming).
The term ??cargo cult?? is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war. Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman’s characterization of certain practices as ??cargo cult science? in his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN 0-393-01921-7).
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