All of these definitions are taken from Stack Overflow. Take a read through, they’re hilarious. Here is a summary and my favorites.

Gold Plating Adding features that are unimportant (as little as to be useless)

Build Potato When your code check-in breaks the build, you receive a build potato. It stays with you until someone else’s code check-in breaks the build.

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Hydra Code Code that cannot be fixed. One fix causes two new bugs. It should be rewritten.

A Duck A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product. Wire_005.jpg

Smug Report - a bug submitted by a user who thinks he knows a lot more about the system’s design than he really does. Filled with irrelevant technical details and one or more suggestions (always wrong) about what he thinks is causing the problem and how we should fix it.

The Affair If you invoke a private method in C++ from a class with friend status.

Mortgage Code Code purposely so terrible that only you can maintain it, forcing your employer to keep you; thus providing job security ( so you can pay your mortgage).

The Counterbug A bug you present when presented with a bug caused by the person presenting the bug

Workaroundability The feeling when already hacked approach still can or can’t be hacked further.

Perl-grade obfuscation The highest level of obfuscation possible. Better than passing code through a 1-way hash function. “No one will reverse engineer our code - it’s written in Perl.”

Smurf Naming Convention When almost every class has the same prefix.

“SmurfAccountView passes a SmurfAccountDTO to the SmurfAccountController. The SmurfID is used to fetch a SmurfOrderHistory which is passed to the SmurfHistoryMatch before forwarding to either SmurfHistoryReviewView or SmurfHistoryReportingView.”

ColdFusion An out of date esoteric technology or language

Ninja Comments: // /*** */

Egyptian Brackets:

if (a == b) {
    printf("hello");
}

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The Heisenbug A computer bug that disappears or alters its characteristics when an attempt is made to study it.

IRQed annoyed by interruptions, The distinction between “IRQed” and “irked” is subtle and only obvious in written form or by context.

Stringly Typed A riff on strongly typed. Used to describe an implementation that needlessly relies on strings when programmer & refactor friendly options are available.

Automanually The term is used to refer to a batch job or application that should be scheduled or triggered automatically, but due to unspecified reasons (typically, bugs), requires manual intervention every time.

Flux Capacitate When a piece of jargon is used to confuse someone who really has no business asking a particular question.

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The Higgs-Bugson A hypothetical bug predicted to exist based on a small number of possibly related event log entries and vague anecdotal reports from users. It is difficult (if not impossible) to reproduce on a dev machine because you don’t really know if it’s there, and if it is there what is causing it.

Databasically “Hey, I’ll put all of our customers into a Word document and then we can X.” “No, we should do that database-ically so that we can keep that list up to date.”

The Mad Girlfriend Bug For when you see something strange happening, but it will just tell you everything is fine.

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Natural Selection The act of replacing someone else’s code with your own.

The God Object An object that knows too much or does too much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_object

The Megamoth or Mega Monolithic Method Often contained inside a God Object and usually stretches over two screens in height.

DeathStar2.jpg

Common Law Feature A bug in the application that has existed so long that it is now part of the expected functionality, and user support is required to actually fix it.

The Impediphile - Someone who codes in such a manner as to constantly cause impediments to others work.

“You’re not holding the mouse right” When someone shows me a problem they are having and I don’t have an answer for them, Just say

Floater The case in the bug tracking system that seems to always be sitting near the top of the queue but never gets claimed. It just floats there while developers work around it.

Fidel-Floater–11508.jpg

Yoda Conditions using if(constant == variable) instead of if(variable == constant), like if(4 == foo). Because it’s like saying “if blue is the sky” or “if tall is the man”.

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