Super Mario Bros. 2
w:Super Mario Bros. 2

(video games) Initialism of Super Mario Bros. 2.


SMW

(video games) Initialism of Super Mario World.


(video games) Initialism of Super Mario 64.


MKW

(video games) Initialism of Mario Kart Wii.


DKC

Donkey Kong Country
w:Donkey Kong Country

(video games) Initialism of Donkey Kong Country.


Scratcher

visual programming language
visual programming language#English

(programming) A user of the Scratch visual programming language.


Scratch

(programming) A free educational visual programming language developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.


visual programming language

en-noun

visual programming language (plural visual programming languages)

programming language
programming language#English

(programming) A programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by writing code.


JSDT

(eclipse, JavaScript, software) Initialism of JavaScript Development Tools.


complemented class

complemented class (plural complemented classes)

(regular expressions) Characters which are excluded in a pattern.


foreach loop

(programming) A section of code similar to a for loop, but repeating a series of instructions for every item in a collection.


beta testing

(software, testing) A form of software testing, after the alpha testing stage, involving a limited audience of external users.


Ager

(video games, informal) A fan of the Age of Empires series of real-time strategy video games.


stringize

en-verb

stringize (third-person singular simple present stringizes, present participle stringizing, simple past and past participle stringized)

stringizes (present singular third-person)
stringizing (participle present)
stringized (participle past)
stringized (past)

(programming, transitive) To convert to, or treat as, a string of text characters.


stringization

These new features are charizing, stringization, token concatenation, string concatenation, trigraph replacement, and predefined macros.

1993, Mark Andrews, Visual C++ Object-oriented Programming, page 186:

(programming) The process of stringizing.


token-pasting operator

en-noun

token-pasting operator (plural token-pasting operators)

(programming) The operator ## in the C or C++ preprocessor, which permits separate tokens to be joined into a single token.


charizing

(programming) Conversion to, or treatment as, a char (text character).


derank

en-verb

derank (third-person singular simple present deranks, present participle deranking, simple past and past participle deranked)

deranks (present singular third-person)
deranking (participle present)
deranked (participle past)
deranked (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-derank.wav

A building will derank one level at a time as its hitpoints are whittled away. So, while it may seem that the life bar is at its end, attackers need to take into account if they are merely deranking the building by one or whether they have taken it down to Rank1 and are about to destroy the building.

2003, John Henderson, BradyGames, & Danielle Vanderlip, Shadowbane Official Strategy Guide, →ISBN, page 295:

Derank lobbies were used to damage and undermine the statistical profiles and removing the associated unlocks of players lured into playing them, initially those deemed to have played inapproprately by illegitimately improving their profiles by modding. While this may have been an act of retribution, Zakhaev got most of his enjoyment from the anguished responses of those he had deranked, and the deranking lobby became a barbed example of counterplay - a vindictive prank to humilieate, annoy, and cost victimes time.

2015, Alan F. Meades, Understanding Counterplay in Video Games, →ISBN, page 60:

Some are maybe confused as to why some players would choose to derank themselves on purpose, but it's actually a trick that master players do in order to be paired up with players of a lower skill level during matches.

2017 February 6, Ike Recio, “Blizzard Is Against 'Overwatch' Players Who Derank Themselves On Purpose”, in iTech Post:

(video games) To lower or remove achievements and skill level.


Rust

Graydon Hoare, who initiated the language, has stated that it was possibly named after rust fungi and may be related to robust.

In Rust, the compiler plays a gatekeeper role by refusing to compile code with these elusive bugs, including concurrency bugs.

2019, Steve Klabnik, Carol Nichols, The Rust Programming Language, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page xxvi:

programming language
programming language

(computer languages) A multiparadigm programming language focused on safety, especially safe concurrency.


dreaded diamond

en-noun

dreaded diamond (plural dreaded diamonds)

object-oriented programming
object-oriented programming

(object-oriented programming, humorous) The diamond problem.


CCN

(software) Initialism of cyclomatic complexity number.


Wine

* As an English surname, from the noun wine.
* As a German surname, Americanized from Wein.

operating system
operating system#English

(software) A free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems.


beta tester

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-beta tester.wav

(software) Someone who performs beta testing.


Linus' Law

Named after Finnish-American software engineer Linus Torvalds (1969–) who is the creator of, and was for a long time principal developer of, the Linux kernel.

named-after

software engineering
software engineering

(software engineering) A claim about software development that states that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.


en-proverb

en-au-given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.ogg

Coined by American programmer & open source advocate Eric S. Raymond in his 1999 essay and book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

coin

(software engineering) Given a large enough beta tester and codeveloper base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone.


datetime

If you anticipate dealing with a database with multiple time zones, we suggest you consider a region-to-GMT offset table and store all times as absolute GMT datetimes for ease of calculation.

2002, Tamar E. Granor, Doug Hennig, Ted Roche, Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0, page 24:

(programming) A variable or data type that can hold both date and time components.


MEAN

(web development) Acronym of MongoDB, Express.js, AngularJS, Node.js: a software stack for developing web sites with both client-side and server-side use of JavaScript.


BDFL

Originally applied to Guido van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language.

BDFL can be a type of governance that is part of a project from the onset, or it can emerge from the do-acracy form described earlier. We most often see the former: Rasmus Lerdorf with PHP, Linus Torvalds with the Linux kernel, and Guido van Rossum with Python.

2023, John Mertic, Open Source Projects—Beyond Code: A blueprint for scalable and sustainable open source projects, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 69:

(software, humorous) Initialism of benevolent dictator for life (leader of an open-source software project who retains the final say in disputes or arguments within the community)


overtuned

en-adj

overtuned (comparative more overtuned, superlative most overtuned)

more overtuned (comparative)
most overtuned (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-overtuned.wav

I think honestly some of the abilities we gave Dash may have been slightly overtuned.

2019 July 17, Cass Marshall, quoting Matt Jackson, “Deathgarden: Bloodharvest is evolving again, with a new game mode and more”, in Polygon, archived from the original on 2023-06-01:

The Hearthstone developers wanted to capture that fantasy within the context of a head-to-head CCG, and the results were outstandingly overtuned. In the hours after Ashes of Outland dropped, Demon Hunter was the only class in the game with a positive win rate.

2020 June 4, “’Hearthstone’ updates used to take ages. Times have changed.”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-11-08:

As mentioned, Killjoy will probably feel excessively overtuned at the lowest ranks of competitive play thanks to the lack of environmental awareness seen in beginner players.

2020 August 2, Patricio Kobek, “Why VALORANT's Killjoy Won't Be Overpowered, According To The Devs”, in TheGamer, archived from the original on 2023-10-08:

In a thread that's gained some traction on the Overwatch subreddit, an inquiry about how players feel a short time after the Doomfist changes went live has revealed that players think this hero is a bit overtuned.

2022 December 8, Carver Fisher, “Overwatch 2 players claim Doomfist was "overbuffed" for Season 2”, in Dexerto, archived from the original on 2023-06-04:

Tuned or adjusted so as to be excessive (in terms of some quality), especially:

(video games) Of a character, item, ability, etc.: excessively powerful; overpowered.

For a while, there was a concern that nobody could beat Riven, that Last Wish was simply too overtuned for day-one raiders. But then the first crew beat the boss around power level 550, and it became clear that Bungie had done something amazing.

2018 September 19, Ryan Gilliam, “Only 12 players beat Destiny's new raid in the first 24 hours — and that's awesome”, in Polygon, archived from the original on 2022-12-06:

When Shadowlands launched back in November, the challenges of an initially overtuned Castle Nathria raid, seemingly endless Torghast runs, and the introduction of the Covenant system were enough to keep us all busy.

2021 June 25, Sarah James, “World of Warcraft's upcoming power system risks trivialising the work put into legendary gear”, in PC Gamer, archived from the original on 2022-12-01:

In the short term, there is at least one quick fix coming to rebalance things after the 1.1.0 patch. Piepiora said the team felt that nightmare dungeons in the game are "dramatically overtuned" and that tier 100 nightmare dungeons are "excruciatingly difficult" for most classes, resulting in players pursuing very specific builds.

2023 July 22, Wes Davis, quoting Joe Piepiora, “Blizzard devs know their Diablo IV patch was bad”, in The Verge, archived from the original on 2023-08-16:

(video games) Of a raid or similar challenge: excessively difficult.


shimeji

Shimejis are little characters (desktop buddies or mascots) who play around in your windows of Google Chrome (web browser) or Chrome OS, while you are browsing the internet. Pick up a shimeji with the mouse pointer, drag them around, and drop them where you want. They walk, crawl, and climb all over your screen and interact with elements on web pages.

2017 August 14, Jarno Le Conté, Shimeji Browser Extension, archived from the original on 2017-08-26:

HoloCouncil Shimejis are your desktop companions […] that moves^([sic – meaning move]) around your screen. Aside from walking and running around, they do all sorts of things that aren't too distracting for you. They're mostly just there to chill and vibe with you!

2023 September 13 (last accessed), Akkanen, “HoloCouncil Shimejis”, in itch.io, archived from the original on 2023-04-03:

i want that one zombie max shimeji so bad but im embarrassed to ask the artist for it after 4 damn years

2023 September 13, @ambrpricefield, “Archived copy”, in Twitter, archived from the original on 2023-09-13:

(software) An animated figure created by a computer program which walks around the screen and performs animations like waving or sitting on windows.


longplay

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-longplay.wav

(video games) A full recording of a video game being played from start to completion.


consolization

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-consolization.wav

(video games) The conversion of a game to run on a games console.


pseudo-localization

(software engineering) The practice of using fake localization strings during development, intended to test the software's capability of handling multilingual text.


fat comma

(programming, Perl) The operator =>, used in declaring hashes.


(video games) Initialism of one-credit (or coin) clear: the feat of playing through an arcade game from start to finish without having to insert further coins or tokens.


softlock

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-softlock.wav

I defeated the boss, but got hit at the exact same time; now I'm stuck in a softlock and can't exit the level.

(video games) A situation where a game remains apparently playable, but further progress is impossible, typically due to a design flaw or glitch.


softlock

en-verb

softlock (third-person singular simple present softlocks, present participle softlocking, simple past and past participle softlocked)

softlocks (present singular third-person)
softlocking (participle present)
softlocked (participle past)
softlocked (past)

(video games, transitive or intransitive) To be in or cause a softlock; to remain playable but unable to progress.


CPOL

(software) Initialism of code project open license.


typechecker

The catch is that to get the full benefits of the type checker, the programmers have to add complex annotations to their code.

2015 April 2, James Somers, “Toolkits for the Mind”, in MIT Technology Review:

(programming) A system or algorithm that verifies values against their required data types, according to the type system of the language.


PMC

project management
project management#English

(software) Initialism of project management committee (a committee of the Apache Software Foundation)


cryptoworm

(cryptography, computer security) A form of malware that spreads in the form of a worm and encrypts victims' data.


Minecraft

Compound of mine + craft; coined by Paul Eres in May 2009, a member of the TIGSource Forums.

Chlorine blue, bordered in forest green and looking out onto a Grecian gazebo, the pool was composed of hundreds of ceramic kitchen tiles, like a Minecraft version of C.Z. Guest’s once-upon-a-time world.

2016 September 13, Vanessa Friedman, “New York Fashion Week Comes to Life With Thom Browne and Proenza Schouler”, in The New York Times:

If you know a tween, chances are you have bought them something sparkly in the past couple of years – and not only if they are a girl. From Next’s boys’ sequinned T-shirt that flips between Minecraft designs to Paperchase’s rainbow-encrusted notebook[…], these addictively tactile surfaces are everywhere.

2019 February 25, Dale Berning Sawa, “Why the world has gone wild for reversible sequins”, in The Guardian:

London’s mayoralty insists that its new homes must look like old homes – just new, and more of them. So the city has ended up with endless variations of a Georgian terrace that looks like it’s been rendered in Minecraft.

2022 August 24, India Block, “Like a beige, banal biscuit tin: why London’s new buildings all look the same”, in The Guardian:

(video games) A sandbox video game, released in 2011, in which players explore a three-dimensional world made of blocks and can craft items and build structures.


brick breaker

A brick-breaker kind of game featuring musical symbols (rests and notes), an elephant, and a ball!

2000, NewestShareware.com, “NewestShareware.com Issue #105”, in alt.comp.shareware (Usenet):

Synopsis: New port: games/tecnoballz, a brick breaker (Arkanoid-like game)

2005, Jean-Yves Lefort, “ports/76484: New port: games/tecnoballz, a brick breaker”, in mailing.freebsd.ports-bugs (Usenet):

(video games) A game of a genre that involves moving a paddle horizontally or vertically to deflect a ball, using the deflected ball to destroy an arrangement of bricks on the screen.


paamayim nekudotayim

From Hebrew פעמיים נקודתיים (“double colon”); introduced in the Israeli-developed Zend Engine 0.5 used in PHP 3. The correct word should be nekudatayim, but Israelis commonly say the word with this mistake.

uder

פעמיים נקודתיים

(programming) The scope resolution operator :: in the PHP programming language.


bytestring

However, the underlying file model of these approaches is that of Unix files (i.e., bytestrings), whereas we assume record-structured files with key-based access.

1994, Richard T. Snodgrass, Marianne Southall Winslett, Association for Computing Machinery. Special Interest Group on Management of Data, Proceedings (page 255)

Standard Python strings are really bytestrings, and a Python character, being such a string of length 1, is really a byte.

2005, Alex Martelli, Anna Ravenscroft, David Ascher, Python Cookbook:

(programming) A text string treated as a series of single bytes rather than a series of characters of possibly varying storage size.


FNaF

Five Nights at Freddy's
w:Five Nights at Freddy's

(video games) Acronym of Five Nights at Freddy's (video game series).


style sheet language

en-noun

style sheet language (plural style sheet languages)

(programming) A computer language that expresses the presentation of structured documents.

Stylesheet-Sprache

a computer language that expresses the presentation of structured documents


regression testing

During manual test execution, a newly introduced defect to previously working functionality might not be found until hours into the regression testing cycle.

1999, Elfriede Dustin, Jeff Rashka, John Paul, Automated Software Testing, →ISBN:

Without regression testing, unseen bugs will accumulate, until suddenly nothing works in what was once thought to be a stable system.

2000, Robert V. Binder, Testing Object-oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools, →ISBN, page 32:

Regression testing can account for as much as one-half of the cost of software maintenance.

2004, Mark Last, Abraham Kandel, Horst Bunke, Artificial Intelligence Methods in Software Testing, →ISBN, page 52:

(software engineering) Testing a program after a modification to ensure that areas that should not be affected by the update behave as they did in previous versions.


predeclaration

(programming) A declaration made in advance; forward declaration.


bareword

(programming, chiefly Perl) A sequence of text characters in source code that do not form a keyword nor part of a quoted string, and may potentially be interpreted in various ways.


forward-declare

en-verb

forward-declare (third-person singular simple present forward-declares, present participle forward-declaring, simple past and past participle forward-declared)

forward-declares (present singular third-person)
forward-declaring (participle present)
forward-declared (participle past)
forward-declared (past)

(transitive, programming) Synonym of predeclare


conditional comment

en-noun

conditional comment (plural conditional comments)

(programming) A comment in source code that can be interpreted as a directive by some systems, but is ignored by those others that are not aware of the convention; formerly used to overcome compatibility issues between web browsers.


X-pack

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-X-pack.wav

(video games, informal) Abbreviation of expansion pack.


behavioral subtyping

(programming, language theory) A subtype relation of the form that each subtype object satisfies the specification of the supertype.


weak typing

(computing, programming) A system that does not place any restriction on the interactions between objects of different data types.


premature optimisation

premature optimisation (countable and uncountable, plural premature optimisations)

premature optimization
premature optimization#English

(programming) Alternative form of premature optimization


off-by-one error

off-by-one error (plural off-by-one errors)

Using an incorrect relational operator or an incorrect final value of a loop counter in the loop-continuation condition of a repetition statement causes an off-by-one error.

2005, Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel, C# for Programmers, second edition, Prentice Hall Professional, →ISBN, page 164:

(programming) A logic error where a value, typically the number of iterations of a loop, is specified incorrectly, being either 1 less or 1 more than it should be.


impedance mismatch

impedance mismatch (plural impedance mismatches)

Derived from the concept of impedance matching in electrical engineering.

Some argue that having impedance mismatch is difficult for programming intensive applications.

1997, Bhavani M. Thuraisingham, Data Management Systems: Evolution and Interoperation, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 33:

But the impedance mismatch between SQL and Java was no better than between SQL and other languages.

2002, Jim Melton, Advanced SQL:1999: Understanding Object-Relational and Other Advanced Features, Morgan Kaufmann, →ISBN, page 353:

Why does a technological impedance mismatch exist?

2004, Scott W. Ambler, The Object Primer: Agile Model-Driven Development with UML 2.0, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 442:

(object-oriented programming) A set of conceptual and technical difficulties that are often encountered when a relational database is being served by an object-oriented application program, particularly because objects or class definitions must be mapped to database tables defined by a relational schema.


LLVM

(programming) Initialism of Low Level Virtual Machine. (collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies that are used to develop compiler front ends and back ends)


IDLE

(programming, Python) Initialism of Integrated DeveLopment Environment.

(programming, Python) Initialism of Integrated Development and Learning Environment.


augmented assignment

augmented assignment (countable and uncountable, plural augmented assignments)

(programming) An assignment by which an operator takes a variable as one of its arguments and then assigns the result back to this variable.


sharity

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-sharity.wav

Originally a brand name for a product, possibly a Blend of share + charity + rarity.

A way around the lock-up problem of smbfs is to use sharity.

2001, Mike McCune, Integrating Linux and Windows, →ISBN, page 146:

But with the advent of sharity that's shifted to: 'I've just got hold of something no one else has got, so I'm immediately going to make it available to EVERYBODY.'

2011, Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past, →ISBN:

According to Eric Lumbleau, creator of the music blog Mutant Sounds, the motivation behind sharity is a form of "self-aggrandizing altruism...blog authors anointing themselves as gurus and presiding over their own little kingdom of cool."

2015, Allan J. Kimmel, People and Products: Consumer Behavior and Product Design, →ISBN:

A file-hosting and storage service for users to upload and share videos, music, software, and other content for others to use.


endless runner

(video games) A style of platform game in which the player character runs non-stop through a hazardous course, and must be guided to jump, duck, etc. to avoid the hazards.


Dexit

Blend of Pokédex + exit. Also a pun on Brexit.

Game Freak came clean, stating that it simply couldn’t include all Pokémon in the games — a first for the series — because of technical limitations. This controversy, known as Dexit by the fans, might have prompted less blowback if Game Freak could show that its decision led to better graphics and performance.

2022 November 18, Jhaan Elker, “After ‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Violet,’ we can’t give Game Freak a pass”, in The Washington Post:

(Pokémon, fandom slang) The decision by Game Freak to make the National Pokédex absent from Pokémon Sword and Shield as well as for many Pokémon to be completely unavailable in these games.


Fenders

"Im going to sleep!" Reads fenders fics on phone until 4am

2015 July 23, Tentacle (@10takler), Twitter:

EVERYBODY SHIPS FENDERS WRONG!!!! less angry makeouts more talking about feelings

2015 August 2, silver stars (@naiakiir), Twitter:

In my Fenders headcanon, Anders accompanies Fenris in Blue Wraith.

2023 June 26, BinkyProd (@BinkyProd), Twitter:

(fandom slang) The ship of characters Fenris and Anders from Dragon Age II.


TeX

The letters of the name are meant to represent the capital Greek letters Τ (tau), Ε (epsilon), and Χ (chi), as TeX is an abbreviation of Ancient Greek τέχνη (tékhnē), which is also the root word of technical.

TFFI-mode makes it possible for BibTeX to work on plain TeX documents as well.

1986, Jacques Desarmenien, TEX for Scientific Documentation: Second European Conference, Strasbourg, France, June 19-21, 1986. Proceedings, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 41:

(computer languages) A digital typesetting system used primarily for the formatting of mathematical formulae.


zip bomb

(computing) A malicious zip file designed to produce a very large output, and consume a great deal of processing resources, during decompression.


code completion

code completion (countable and uncountable, plural code completions)

(programming, uncountable) Autocompletion of source code.

(programming) A token predicted by means of autocompletion.


CoC

(video games) Abbreviation of Clash of Clans.


platformy

en-adj

platformy (comparative more platformy, superlative most platformy)

more platformy (comparative)
most platformy (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-platformy.wav

A colourful, bouncy, groovesome platformy sort of thing that's a tad too hard for its own good.

1992, Jon Pillar, Captain Dynamo (video game review in Your Sinclair issue 79)

[…] a radical new, non-platformy direction […]

2006, Nintendo Power, volumes 208-210, page 143:

(video games, colloquial) Characteristic of platform games.


free roam

If players can wander freely about the video game environment at their own pace with no linear pathway, as in Grand Theft Auto, the game is referred to as a “sandbox” or “free roam” game.

2011, Craig Haen, Engaging Boys in Treatment: Creative Approaches to the Therapy Process, →ISBN:

This achievement can be acquired in multiple places in the world, both free roam mode and in story mode.

2017, Hse Game, Lego Star Wars The Force Unleashed Wii U Unofficial Game Guide, →ISBN:

Deadly Premonition borrows from just about every game out there. It has the strange otherworld from Silent Hill (albeit not as creepy), the interactive cinematic elements from Heavy Rain (albeit not as pretentious), the free roam freedom of Grand Theft Auto (albeit not as big), and is in fact the open-world investigative adventure Alan Wake first promised to be.

2017, The Cheat Mistress, EZ Gamer, →ISBN:

(video games) A game mode where players can explore the game environment at will, rather than following a fixed story line.


free roam

en-verb

free roam (third-person singular simple present free roams, present participle free roaming, simple past and past participle free roamed)

free roams (present singular third-person)
free roaming (participle present)
free roamed (participle past)
free roamed (past)

After completing the initial London Story memory 'The Darkest Hour', you'll be able to free roam in WWI-era London and complete some additional associate tasks.

2015, GamerGuides.com, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - Strategy Guide, →ISBN:

(video games) To play in free roam mode.


noclip

noclip (third-person singular simple present noclips, present participle noclipping, simple past and past participle noclipped)

noclips (present singular third-person)
noclipping (participle present)
noclipped (participle past)
noclipped (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-noclip.wav

From no clip. Perhaps originates from the 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D, where (in the shareware version) using the appropriate cheat code displays a message "No clipping ON".

(video games) To navigate through a game environment with collisions disabled, so as to be able to pass through solid walls, etc.


leaky abstraction

en-noun

leaky abstraction (plural leaky abstractions)

Popularised in 2002 by software engineer Joel Spolsky.

This is a classic case of leaky abstraction. Repository is supposed to abstract away any concerns around querying the database, but now what we are doing here is returning an IQueryable<T> to the consuming code and asking it to build the queries, thus leaking the abstraction that is supposed to be hidden into repository.

2015, Suhas Chatekar, Learning NHibernate 4, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 291:

(software engineering) An abstraction that undesirably exposes details and limitations of its underlying implementation.


softwear

I also need church shoes – size 3 or 4 – for my eight-year-old daughter [and] softwear and church clothes for a 12-year-old boy.

2011, M.T., Dear Christine, The Nation News (Barbados)

At the time he was wearing a white T-shirt, long dress pants, and white softwear.

2017, “Elderly man on police missing persons list”, in Daily, Barbados: Nation:

Please can someone point me in the right direction for advice on Hardwear & softwear.

1995 August 1, ha...@eastcoast.co.za, “FAX ON DEMAND SOFTWEAR & HARDWEAR - Please help”, in comp.dcom.fax (Usenet), retrieved 2022-05-09:

and why is it in alt.2600.et al
its not hardwear
its not softwear
its not cracks hacks or codes
its not cards phreaks wearz or hz
its a personallity belongs in a different catagory

1998 February 14, nyarl-tep, “YOURE ALL FUCKIN DEAD!!!!!”, in alt.2600.phreakz (Usenet), retrieved 2022-05-09:


singlecast

(programming, of a delegate) Having a single target; not multicast.


costatement

(programming) A list of statements that effectively execute together (though not simultaneously), such that each can yield execution to the others to avoid delaying the program. They are used to implement cooperative multitasking.


superinterface

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-superinterface.wav

(object-oriented programming) The interface from which another (the subinterface) is derived.


special case

en-verb

special case (third-person singular simple present special cases, present participle special casing, simple past and past participle special cased)

special cases (present singular third-person)
special casing (participle present)
special cased (participle past)
special cased (past)

Special-casing the 100 most common words in English might speed things up.

1988, Jon Louis Bentley, More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder, page 10:

If these programs work as well as they can even without going through QuickDraw, what's the penalty for going around the system and special casing?

1992, Scott Knaster, Keith Rollin, Macintosh Programming Secrets, page 46:

Other languages have since special-cased that kind of computation with, for example, generators in Python or something where you can yield values.

2009, Peter Seibel, Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, page 258:

(transitive, intransitive, chiefly programming) To treat something as a special case; to handle in an explicitly different way.


OXM

(object-oriented programming) Initialism of Object XML Mappings.


toys-to-life

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-toys-to-life.wav

(video games) A video game feature that allows physical figurines to be recognised by the machine (through radio tagging, image recognition, etc.) and incorporated into gameplay.


ganker

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-ganker.wav

(online gaming, slang) One who ganks in gameplay.


lockdown browser

en-noun

lockdown browser (plural lockdown browsers)

(education) A software package, essentially a restricted web browser, that prevents users from navigating away from a particular online task, commonly used when holding tests, quizzes, etc.


concat

en-verb

concat (third-person singular simple present concats, present participle concatting, simple past and past participle concatted)

concats (present singular third-person)
concatting (participle present)
concatted (participle past)
concatted (past)

Abbreviation; also used as a keyword or function name in some programming environments.


OOM

If you write infinitely recursive code, you might generate an OOM error.

(programming) Initialism of out of memory.

(video games) Initialism of out of mana.


AVGN

While it’s unclear if Wingard will ever join Rolfe for an AVGN episode, it’s definitely cool to learn that we could have seen a piece of internet culture take part in mainstream media — but who knows what further opportunities await him down the road?

2021 April 2, Virginia Glaze, “AVGN explains why he turned down role in Godzilla vs Kong”, in Dexerto:

Angry Video Game Nerd
w:Angry Video Game Nerd

(video games) Initialism of Angry Video Game Nerd.


double free

(programming) The situation where a program attempts to free a previously allocated resource more than once, potentially resulting in undefined behaviour that may be exploited by an attacker.


fraggable

en-adj

fraggable (comparative more fraggable, superlative most fraggable)

more fraggable (comparative)
most fraggable (superlative)

We are in a familiar FPS dungeon world with massively armoured avatars toting huge weapons, but the soundtrack is not quite what we might expect:
'Hello there Razor, you're looking sharp.'
'Hi Anarchy, you're more fraggable than ever and I'm not the only one who thinks so.'

2006, Jon Dovey, Helen W. Kennedy, Game Cultures: Computer Games As New Media:

For example, games are highly interactive but a dangerous beast when used for virtual heritage: content is fraggable, destroyed rather than created, and the social position of the participants is continually threatened rather than established.

2007, Yehuda Kalay, Thomas Kvan, Janice Affleck, New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage:

(video games, slang) Able to be fragged (killed).


theorycrafting

en-noun

theorycrafting (countable and uncountable, plural theorycraftings)

(video games) The act by which something is theorycrafted.


theorycraft

en-verb

theorycraft (third-person singular simple present theorycrafts, present participle theorycrafting, simple past and past participle theorycrafted)

theorycrafts (present singular third-person)
theorycrafting (participle present)
theorycrafted (participle past)
theorycrafted (past)

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(video games) To analyze (especially mathematically) the underlying mechanics of a video game in order to optimize or minimax one's gameplay.


theorycraft

en-noun

theorycraft (countable and uncountable, plural theorycrafts)


KSP

Kerbal Space Program
w:Kerbal Space Program

(video games) Initialism of Kerbal Space Program.


gray-box testing

grey-box testing
grey-box testing#English

(software, testing) Alternative form of grey-box testing.


grey-box testing

black-box testing
black-box testing#English

white-box testing
white-box testing#English

(software, testing) A combination of black-box testing and white-box testing, where knowledge about the internal data structures and algorithms is used to design tests while executing those tests at the user, or black-box, level.


aim assist

You have to use the rapid fire mode on your PBC to turn off aim assist.

2001 April 8, Stephen Robertson, “Re: Wahooo, just got IWar Deluxe for $10”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.space-sim (Usenet), message-ID <hM1A6.69732$BA3.565909@monolith.news.easynet.net>:

The lack of a second analog stick makes aiming and strafing somewhat difficult, though the game compensates by including an “aim assist” feature to help wayward shots find their mark.

2007 October, Ryan Burke, “Call of Duty: Roads to Victory, by Activision, 2007, $39.99.”, in Military History, volume 24, number 7, Weider History Group, →ISSN, page 69:

The only way to make nonobvious, effective aim assist is to create a number of interleaved subsystems that help players in different ways.

2013, Tynan Sylvester, Designing Games: a Guide to Engineering Experiences, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 241:

(video games) Automatic adjustment to aim to improve accuracy.


permanent brain

permanent brain (countable and uncountable, plural permanent brains)

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This observation is in line with common human intuition that too strong or too weak opponents are not as valuable as the ones playing on approximately the same level. The weakest feature of KnightCap was playing in the opening phase. One possible remedy to this problem is the idea of “permanent brain” introduced in Crafty - the strongest publicly available freeware Chess program and a direct descendant of a former Computer Chess Champion - Cray Blitz.

2007, Wlodzislaw Duch, Jacek Mandziuk, Challenges for Computational Intelligence, page 417:

The [chess] program was set in normal playing mode, with non-deterministic, permanent brain styles. Technically it was given ample pause times, […]

2007, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research:

artificial intelligence
artificial intelligence

(video games) In turn-based games, the feature of an artificial intelligence opponent that allows it to evaluate and plan its moves even during another player's turn.


AGDQ

Awesome Games Done Quick
w:Awesome Games Done Quick

(video games) Initialism of Awesome Games Done Quick.


GDQ

(video games) Initialism of Games Done Quick.


SGDQ

Summer Games Done Quick
w:Summer Games Done Quick

(video games) Initialism of Summer Games Done Quick.


safe navigation operator

safe navigation operator (plural safe navigation operators)

One operator I haven't talked about yet is the safe navigation operator (?.). By preceding a dot with a question mark, you can safely navigate to methods or properties of an object even if that object is null.

2009, Bashar Jawad, Groovy and Grails Recipes, page 57:

The safe navigation operator (?.) provides navigation on the nested properties without getting any exception when a null value is evaluated from any of the properties iterated.

2015, Mert Caliskan, Kenan Sevindik, Beginning Spring, page 278:

C# 6 introduced a cascading nulls operator, also called the null-conditional operator and the safe navigation operator.

2017, Gary McLean Hall, Adaptive Code: Agile coding with design patterns and SOLID principles:

(programming) A binary operator that returns its second argument, unless the first argument is null, in which case it returns null; used to simplify code that would otherwise need multiple explicit checks for nullity.


real-time attack

real-time attack (countable and uncountable, plural real-time attacks)

(video games, speedrunning) A non-tool-assisted speedrun of a game that is timed using a separate timer from that of any in-game timer.

(video games, speedrunning) The timing method itself used to time such speedruns.


retval

(programming) Abbreviation of return value.


leaning toothpick syndrome

leaning toothpick syndrome (uncountable)

Introduced in the official Perl documentation, in reference to the shape of the backslash character.

(programming) The situation in which a quoted string expression becomes difficult to read because it contains a large number of escape characters, usually backslashes, to avoid delimiter collision.


SSDL

The SOAP Service Description Language (SSDL) [20] describes a message exchange from the point of view of a single service...

2008, Nitzsche J. et al.: WSDL 2.0 message exchange patterns: limitations and opportunities, page 1:

In [13], Parastatidis and Webber propose SSDL (SOAP Service Description Language) as a language to describe Web services...

2008, Rosenberg et al.: Integrated metadata support for web service runtimes, page 1:

2005, Parastatidis et al.: The SOAP Service Description Language (SSDL) is a SOAP-centric contract definition language for Web Services, abstract:

SOAP Service Description Language
w:SOAP Service Description Language

(computer languages, databases) Initialism of SOAP Service Description Language.


gold farm

en-verb

gold farm (third-person singular simple present gold farms, present participle gold farming, simple past and past participle gold farmed)

gold farms (present singular third-person)
gold farming (participle present)
gold farmed (participle past)
gold farmed (past)

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massively multiplayer online games
massively multiplayer online games

(rare, online gaming) To participate in gold farming; to farm/grind for in-game currency (gold in many games) and items in massively multiplayer online games for for-profit resale outside of the game.


gaming console

video game console
video game console#English

(video games) Synonym of video game console


clean coder

(programming) A programmer who writes generally clean code.


pseudolocalization

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(software engineering) The testing of software for internationalization compliance using modified versions of the original text (with the use of foreign script etc.) rather than genuine translations.


bus factor

From the phrase “get hit by a bus” as an informal way to describe a person suddenly becoming unavailable.

It's also important to strengthen what we call the bus factor of your project. Bus factor (noun): the number of people that need to get hit by a bus before your project is completely doomed. What's your team's bus factor?

2012, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman, Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", →ISBN, page 7:

(business, originally software engineering) A measurement of the risk of losing team members, in terms of information and abilities no longer available to the team.


Nintendrone

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(slang, derogatory, video games) A slavish supporter of Nintendo's video games or consoles; a Nintendo fanboy


thunker

And 32-bit Windows applications require the bundled MetaWare Applications Development Kit (ADK), a 32-to-16 bit Windows thunker similar to but predating the Microsoft Win32s system.

1995, Personal Computer Magazine, volume 14, numbers 7-8, page 222:

There were no 32-bit scanner drivers or TWAIN modules, none were forthcoming from Microsoft […] Then along came the TWAIN_32 standard of the universal thunker.

1996, Deke McClelland, Robert Phillips, Photoshop 3 for Windows 95 Bible, page 721:

(programming) A software mechanism that thunks.


loot box

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Admittedly, the loot boxes first of all monetize video games, by reinforcing the pay-to-win logic, but they also contribute to their gamblification (Johnson 2018), […]

2021, Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Jean Frances, Pierre Lénel, editors, The Gamification of Society, volume 2, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 107:

(video games) A consumable virtual item, often in the shape of a box or another container, that gives a player a random selection of in-game items.

caixes de botí

a consumable virtual item that gives a player a random selection of in-game items


murder simulator

en-noun

murder simulator (plural murder simulators)

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(derogatory) A graphic action video game that features killing as an important component.


MMP

MMP (countable and uncountable, plural MMPs)

An MMP can easily become an impossible-to-complete reality simulator.

2003, Jessica Mulligan, Bridgette Patrovsky, Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide, →ISBN, page 78:

Connections between players in MMP games are usually made through in-game mechanisms such as social organizations, guilds, noble houses, political parties, and so on.

2004, Munindar P. Singh, The Practical Handbook of Internet Computing, →ISBN, page 249:

Women tend to look for the emotional draw of a game, which depends on a good storyline, or a complex plot, or a deeper experience with the characters—things male gamers don't necessarily seem to need or want. Games that provide opportunities to connect to other players, that have a social component, or that foster cooperation among the characters or players—all reasons why women are so fond of massive multiplayer (MMP) games—are particularly appealing.

2010, David Shippy, Mickie Phipps, The Race For A New Game Machine, →ISBN:

massively multiplayer online game#English

(online gaming) Initialism of massive multiplayer.


Mii

Blend of Wii + me. First introduced on the Wii, which was released in November 2006.

(video games) A customizable avatar used on several Nintendo video game consoles and mobile applications.


readtable

(programming) In Lisp and related languages, a data structure specifying how text characters are to be interpreted syntactically.


Haskeller

Relatively advanced Haskellers might find the exports of default Prelude lacking or even devastating: encouraging the use of String, asynchronous exceptions (error), and partial functions.

2016, Samuli Thomasson, Haskell High Performance Programming, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 363:

(programming) A person who programs in Haskell.


soundiness

Soundiness is in fact what is meant in many papers that claim to describe a sound analysis.

2015 February, Benjamin Livshits, Manu Sridharan, Yannis Smaragdakis, Ondřej Lhotȧk, J. Nelson Amaral, Bor-Yuh Evan Chang, Samuel Z. Guyer, Uday P. Khedker, Anders Møller, Dimitrios Vardoulakis, “In defense of soundiness: a manifesto”, in Communications of the ACM, volume 58, number 2:

While this lack of soundness and precision can be viewed as a deficiency, we argue that instead – in the spirit of “soundiness” [23] – it is a strength.

2016 February, Ahmet Salih Buyukkayhan, Kaan Onarlioglu, William K Robertson, Engin Kirda, “CrossFire: An Analysis of Firefox Extension-Reuse Vulnerabilities”, in Proceedings of the ISOC Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS):

JayHorn is implemented in the spirit of soundiness [14].

2016, Swarat Chaudhuri, Azadeh Farzan, Computer Aided Verification: 28th International Conference, CAV 2016, →ISBN:

software engineering
software engineering

(software engineering) A state of being mostly sound; the condition of being rigorously sound in all but some well-defined areas; a best approximation of soundness in an environment where absolute soundness or proof of soundness is not feasible.


integration testing

/ɪntəˈɡɹeɪʃən tɛstɪŋ/

(software) the phase in software testing that occurs after unit testing and before validation testing, where individual software modules are combined and tested as a group.


prototype-oriented programming

(programming) A programming paradigm that encapsulates states and operations inside "prototypes" to design applications and computer programs.

prototyporientierte Programmierung

programming paradigm that uses prototypes to design application and computer programs


soundy

en-adj

soundy (comparative more soundy, superlative most soundy)

more soundy (comparative)
most soundy (superlative)

We draw a distinction between analyses that are soundy—mostly sound, with specific, well-identified unsound choices—and analyses that do not concern themselves with soundness.

There is a recent community initiative [23] calling for the development of soundy analysis to handle “hard” language features (such as reflection).

2015 September, Yue Li, Tian Tan, Jingling Xue, “Effective soundness-guided reflection analysis”, in International On Static Analysis:

In this context, perhaps one can only hope for a soundy static analysis [21]: common features should be handled soundly and more esoteric ones should be under-approximated.

2016, Yan Wang, Hailong Zhang, Atanas Rountev, “On the unsoundness of static analysis for android guis”, in Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on State of the Art in Program Analysis:

(software engineering) Mostly sound; sound in all but a few well-defined areas.


blast processing

(informal, video games, now humorous) The processing capabilities of the Sega Genesis video game console.


midboss

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IIFE

You’ve already seen it mentioned a few times, but in case it wasn’t clear, I’m proposing the term “Immediately-Invoked Function Expression”, and “IIFE” if you like acronyms. The pronunciation “iffy” was suggested to me, and I like it, so let’s go with that. What is an Immediately-Invoked Function Expression? It’s a function expression that gets invoked immediately. Just like the name would lead you to believe.

2010 November 15, Ben Alman, “Immediately-Invoked Function Expression (IIFE)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):

(programming) Initialism of immediately-invoked function expression.


shadow memory

(programming) The use of one part of computer memory to store information about other parts of memory, used for example to keep track of which parts have been allocated by the program.


Fakémon

(fandom slang) A fake Pokémon; for example, any Pokémon invented in fanart.


SPA

en-noun

SPA (countable and uncountable, plural SPAs)

single-page application
single-page application#English

(web development) Initialism of single-page application.


Atariesque

(video games, rare) Reminiscent or characteristic of Atari games or products, typified by pixellated graphics and blocky consoles.


commify

en-verb

commify (third-person singular simple present commifies, present participle commifying, simple past and past participle commified)

commifies (present singular third-person)
commifying (participle present)
commified (participle past)
commified (past)

(informal, chiefly software) To insert commas into (a piece of code).


secure by design

(software engineering, of software) designed from the ground up to be secure


warpless

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a warpless speedrun

(video games) Without the use of warps to travel between sections of the game world.


mob programming

(software engineering) A software development approach where the whole team works on a single project at a single computer at the same time.


blockout

en-noun

blockout (countable and uncountable, plural blockouts)

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(countable, video games) A draft of a level where plain blocks serve as placeholders for environmental features.


Postel's law

Named after Internet pioneer Jon Postel (1943–1998).

named-after

Contravariance is consistent with Postel's Law: “Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”

2005, Jesse Liberty, Visual C# 2005: A Developer's Notebook, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 47:

(software engineering) The design principle that software should be conservative as to its own behaviour (i.e. strictly compliant with specifications) but liberal in the behaviour it tolerates from other systems.


multiplat

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(slang, video games) A game released for more than one platform.


wizmode

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wizard mode

The pinball usage is derived from The Who's 1969 concept album Tommy and its song "Pinball Wizard".

(video games, informal) A mode of play in roguelike games, allowing the player to create objects on demand, to be resurrected in the case of death, etc.


team deathmatch

en-noun

team deathmatch (plural team deathmatches)

(video games) A competitive mode found in multiplayer shooter games in which teams of (usually two) competitors attempt to assassinate each other. If there are more than two teams, the variant term multi-team deathmatch may be used.


call site

(programming) The section of code from which another section is called.


dance game

(video games) A video game where a player dances on a pressure-sensitive mat, attempting to follow a pattern of steps shown on screen in time to music.


toplevel

(programming) Alternative form of top-level


EWS

(Microsoft, software) Initialism of Exchange Web Services. (an API for the Microsoft Exchange e-mail server)


SMBSS

Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
w:Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

Initialism of Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.


compile-time

(programming) Properties of the program that can be reasoned about during compilation.


agilist

(software engineering) A practitioner of agile software development.


dress-up game

(video games) A simple form of video game in which the player can dress a character in various different clothing.


pre-fire

en-verb

pre-fire (third-person singular simple present pre-fires, present participle pre-firing, simple past and past participle pre-fired)

pre-fires (present singular third-person)
pre-firing (participle present)
pre-fired (participle past)
pre-fired (past)

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I could hear him just around the corner, so I just started pre-firing until he walked right into the cascade of bullets.

There will be times you go from a full health bar to almost dead in one round of cart combat, but you can always repair at the next town, and there are definitely attacks that you can "pre-fire" to prevent getting bogged down and stay healthy.

2015, Andrew Fretz, “'Wizards and Wagons' Review - Shop Management Gets Mobile”, in TouchArcade, archived from the original on 2018-04-21:

I've seen others where players follow an unseen opponent with their crosshair and pre-fire as they turn the corner for an instant kill.

2016, Rich Stanton, “A negative-sum game: Policing Counter-Strike: GO cheaters with Overwatch”, in Ars Technica, archived from the original on 2018-01-19:

Steel, however, was stuck behind the corner in Squeeky, and he was forced to prefire the Squeeky opening because he knew dephh had to kill him to win the round before time ran out.

2018, Jamie Villanueva, “Steel’s clutch vs coL gives Torqued its first qualifier spot at DreamHack Tours”, in Dot Esports, archived from the original on 2018-04-24:

(video games, intransitive) To shoot at the anticipated location of another player before they are visible or within range.


off-side rule

The computer-programming sense was coined by British computer scientist Peter Landin in 1966 and named after the rule in football.

coin

Blocks in Pythons are delimited by white space indentation: the increase in indentation delimited the start of statements while the decrease signifies the end of the current block (off-side rule).

2018, Encyclopedia of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Elsevier, →ISBN, page 195:

programming language
programming language

(programming) In some programming languages, the convention by which the indentation of a line of source code affects its meaning.


jump'n'run

The scene of jumping on an invisible bridge is then to be seen as a discourse fragment that builds a discourse strand together with other elements (e.g., in the context of other jump'n'runs) that lead into a shared discourse that itself can be integrated into an elementary discourse or a dispositive (cf. Jäger 2004, 117). In the framework of a discourse analysis, Lara Croft's death jump would not be conceived as a unique moment or narrative.

2014, Jason Thompson, The Game Culture Reader, page 69:

The ideal example to illustrate the technique of Mickey-Mousing would, of course, be Warren Spector's Epic Mickey (2010), a jump'n'run game for the Nintendo Wii console in which the namesake of this scoring concept has to travel through wastelands and cartoon universes and meet inhabitants like Oswald the Rabbit, Mickey's historic predecessor abandoned by Disney Productions decades ago.

2012, Peter Moormann, Music and Game: Perspectives on a Popular Alliance, page 98:

There are tons of first person shooters, millions of car or racing games, and thousands of platformers. All great ideas will be cloned and remade sooner or later. My friends and I have paid homage to a couple of our favorite Jump 'n' Runs with Pitiri 1977.

2014, Jürgen Brunner, Getting Started with Clickteam Fusion:

The absence of classical input options certainly complicates the playing of typical genre games as represented by, for example, Jump'n'Runs or Shoot'em Ups. Nevertheless, the touch-sensitive surface of iOS devices offers the possibility of emulating the missing joystick or game pad […]

2016, Thomas Lucka, iOS Game Development: Developing Games for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch:

(video games) A platform game that involves jumping over obstacles.


macOS

From Mac (“Macintosh”) + OS (“operating system”).

(operating systems, trademark) A major operating system, formerly known as OS X (and before that as Mac OS X), used on laptop and desktop computers by Apple, Inc.

operating systems; trademark; operating systems; trademark


gamescape

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More will find their ways into video games because the gamescapes remain unregulated by the FTC. If video games should ever become protected as 'free speech' under the First Amendment (that's what the industry and retailers want), it will be very difficult to regulate the advertisements in video games because they will become part of a protected 'free speech!'

2008, Christopher Thomas Miller, Games: Purpose and Potential in Education, page 205:

The virtual landscape within a video game.


Bushnell's Law

Attributed to video-game pioneer Nolan Bushnell.

The rule that the best video games are easy to learn but difficult to master.


cocktail table

A form of arcade game cabinet resembling a table of this kind, with the screen built into the top surface and facing upwards.


cocktail cabinet

en-noun

cocktail cabinet (plural cocktail cabinets)

Synonym of cocktail table (“style of arcade game cabinet”)


GamerGate

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Alternative letter-case form of Gamergate


freedomware

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[…] And last of the “open software”, a rarer implementation is sourceware. A variation of freedomware, sourceware offers “open source” code with “closed (proprietary) standards”.

2005, Sys Admin: The Journal for UNIX System Administrators, page 48:

(software, rare) free software (with source code available), distinguished from freeware


overindex

en-verb

overindex (third-person singular simple present overindexes, present participle overindexing, simple past and past participle overindexed)

overindexes (present singular third-person)
overindexing (participle present)
overindexed (participle past)
overindexed (past)

(programming, transitive) To attempt to access an element beyond the bounds of (an array).


return-oriented programming

(programming) A computer security exploit technique by which the attacker gains control of the call stack to hijack program control flow and then executes prepared instruction sequences ("gadgets") that are already present in the machine's memory.


code cave

Once a code cave is created, you can execute it using either thread injection or thread hijacking.

2016, Nick Cano, Game Hacking: Developing Autonomous Bots for Online Games:

In ELF executables, there aren't a whole lot of code caves (such as in the PE format), so you are not likely to be able to shove more than just a meager amount of shellcode into existing code slots […]

2016, Ryan "elfmaster" O'Neill, Learning Linux Binary Analysis (page 97)

(programming) A sequence of null bytes in a process's memory, offering the capacity for the injection of custom instructions by a hacker.


most vexing parse

The phrase was introduced by Scott Meyers in Effective STL (2001).

(programming) A specific form of syntactic ambiguity resolution in the C++ programming language, whereby attempts to declare a variable may be undesirably interpreted as attempts to declare a function.


zero-based

Zero-based budgeting
Zero-based numbering

(programming) Of an array or list: such the first element of the array or list is called the zeroth.


(video games, computer graphics) Halfway between two-dimensional and three-dimensional; typically limited to a two-dimensional plane with only limited access to the third dimension.


season pass

(video games) A digital season ticket that grants a user the access to all current and future DLC for a video game.


Nintendium

From Nintendo + -ium (“suffix for naming new elements”).

suffix

[W]hatever they make Nintendo systems out of ("Nintendium," as it's come to be known) seems to be able to withstand anything.

2015 August 3, u/MistaSnowman (username), Hey /r/nintendo, what's your best "Nintendium" story?, r/nintendo (Reddit), archived from the original on 26 May 2020, accessed 26 May 2020

The Joy-Cons need to be comfortable, light, and feel like they’re made of Nintendium (the mysterious alloys Nintendo used in the original NES controller, seemingly related to Gundanium).

2016, Will Greenwald, Nintendo Switch Looks Really Promising, Here’s How They Might Screw It Up, Geek.com

All components feel very sturdy and of solid construction (Nintendium still being used!).

2017, Cory Arnold, Hands-on: Nintendo Switch won't blow you away but will satisfy core gamers, Destructoid:

(humorous) A fictional material credited for the durability of several Nintendo products.


VCL

(Delphi, programming) Initialism of Visual Component Library.


FMX

(Delphi, programming) Initialism of FireMonkey.


Pikaclone

(fandom slang) A Pokémon that resembles, or is seemingly inspired by, Pikachu.


VMCI

(programming) Initialism of Virtual Machine Communication Interface.


Jigglypuff

en-noun

Jigglypuff (plural Jigglypuff or Jigglypuffs)

Jigglypuff (plural)
Jigglypuffs (plural)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Jigglypuff.wav

When they pointed out that I'd have to pay a couple of hundred bucks if I ever rejoined, I just laughed at them, pressed my fingertips to my temples, and visualized about seven and a half pounds off my jigglypuff thighs.

2004, Celia Rivenbark, We're Just Like You, Only Prettier: Confessions of a Tarnished Southern Belle, pages 151–152:

They sleep when you on the mic, you're fucking Jigglypuff

2007, Demigodz, “Well, Well, Well”, in The Godz Must Be Crazier:

And when your body type is "Kirby" or "Jigglypuff", finding a style that is meant for your shape is next to impossible.

2015, Barbara Sorrelson, 45 Reasons It Sucks to be Fat: Daily Diet Motivation, page 27:

(sometimes attributive) Something that resembles the Pokémon Jigglypuff, e.g. by being rotund, bright pink, or able to induce sleep.


continuous delivery

continuous delivery (plural continuous deliveries)

Coordinate term: continuous deployment

(software engineering) An approach where teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time.


arraylet

(programming) Any of the subarrays that make up a larger array-like data structure whose elements do not have to be stored contiguously.


self-interpreter

(programming) A metacircular interpreter where the host programming language is also the language being interpreted.


ungolfed

the original, ungolfed code

(programming) Not having been written in short form according to the challenge of code golf.


run ahead

en-verb

run ahead (third-person singular simple present runs ahead, present participle running ahead, simple past ran ahead, past participle run ahead)

runs ahead (present singular third-person)
running ahead (participle present)
ran ahead (past)
run ahead (participle past)

(software, transitive) To execute (code) in advance, anticipating a likely upcoming need for the result.


Genny

(video games, slang) A Sega Genesis video game console.


gap buffer

(programming) A dynamic array that allows efficient insertion and deletion operations clustered near the same location.


360 noscope

I totally owned that noob with a 360 noscope.

(video games, slang) A kill with a sniper rifle performed without scoping in after doing a 360-degree turn, often but not always while jumping down from a height.


360 noscope

360 noscope (third-person singular simple present 360 noscopes, present participle 360 noscoping, simple past and past participle 360 noscoped)

360 noscopes (present singular third-person)
360 noscoping (participle present)
360 noscoped (participle past)
360 noscoped (past)

I 360 noscoped on some noob.

(video games, slang) To perform a 360 noscope.


battle royale

en-noun

battle royale (plural battles royale or battle royales)

battles royale (plural)
battle royales (plural)

/ˌbætl̩ ɹɔɪˈæl/

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-battle royale.wav

The video game usage derives from the 2000 film Battle Royale, which has a similar premise to the video game genre.

(video games) A video game genre centered around survival, exploration and scavenging, with last-man-standing gameplay.


stealth game

(video games) A type of video game in which the player primarily uses stealth to avoid or overcome antagonists.


Civ

Ци́ва

the Civilization games, or one of the games in this series

If you have played Civ before then, you already know what I am talking about. If you haven't, then what are you waiting for?

1997, Rick Barba, Michael Knight, Rod Harten, CD-ROM Classics: Cheats and Hints to Your Favorite Games, volume 2:

I'd worked almost exclusively on the Wizardry series, so I knew everything about it like the back of my hand. So when I played Civ, I became fascinated with how it did that.

2008, Tracy Fullerton, Game Design Workshop:

(video games, slang) Civilization, a turn-based strategy video game from 1991 (and various sequels) in which the player attempts to build and maintain an empire throughout history.

(video games, slang) a civilization, any of various playable empires controlled by a player in the Civilization games.


collectathon

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Rare would go on to produce several 3D platformers in this mould: Donkey Kong 64 (1999) was an absolute collectathon notable for an appalling opening rap and the ability to play as five very different characters […]

2015, Rich Stanton, A Brief History Of Video Games: From Atari to Virtual Reality, page 202:

As if this wasn't already becoming one of the most tedious collectathons ever, the game only bothers to track the total number of Zygarde Cells and Cores you've collected, which you can check by using the Zygarde Cube item from your bag.

2016, Gamer Guides, Pokémon Sun & Moon - Strategy Guide:

(video games, informal) Synonym of collect-'em-up


death barrier

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-death barrier.wav

(video games) A (usually invisible) plane that causes the player character to die if touched or passed through.


monorepo

From mono- + repo or a blend of monolithic + repo.

As with central deployments, we can look into two different scenarios here too: either using a monorepo as a code base or starting with individual repositories to have dedicated pipelines.

2021, Florian Rappl, The Art of Micro Frontends, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 40:

(software engineering) A monolithic repository, where core code and its dependencies are included in the same repository.


PC bang

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-PC bang.wav

From Korean PC방 (pisi-bang, literally “PC room”). First attested in 1999.

bor

In South Korea, mobile phones have created a new population called transyouths who connect to each other through screens and PC bangs (J.H-j. Choi, 2010).

2021, Micky Lee, Peichi Chung, Media Technologies for Work and Play in East Asia, page 23:

(South Korea) A public internet cafe where people can meet to play multiplayer computer games for a fee.


ODR

One Definition Rule
w:One Definition Rule

(programming, C++) Initialism of One Definition Rule.


barcade

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-barcade.wav

Blend of bar + arcade. A chain of arcade bars by this name first opened in Brooklyn in 2004.

Glen “Hooping Cough” Hodges is proprietor and manager of Nine Chakras, the new retro gaming barcade in town.

2019, Darren Johnson, Darren Johnson's Best Short Stories of 2018:

For a good time in the evening, hit up a barcade, a nightspot that's puntastically exactly what it sounds like — a bar with a ton of old-school coin-operated pinball and arcade cabinets (I'd bet my quarters there's one near you).

2020, Sam Maggs, The Fangirl's Guide to the Universe: A Handbook for Girl Geeks, page 42:

Gaming itself becomes a destination event, taking place at barcades and board game cafes.

2020, Terri Toles Patkin, Matthew Wilhelm Kapell, Who's in the Game?, page 27:

A bar (drinking establishment) equipped with video arcade games.


pessimization

en-noun

pessimization (countable and uncountable, plural pessimizations)

(programming) A change to program code that makes it less efficient, the opposite of an optimization.


optimize out

en-verb

optimize out (third-person singular simple present optimizes out, present participle optimizing out, simple past and past participle optimized out)

optimizes out (present singular third-person)
optimizing out (participle present)
optimized out (participle past)
optimized out (past)

The loop that counts from 1 to 1,000,000 is optimized out by the compiler, because nothing happens inside the loop and the value is not used afterwards.

(transitive, programming) To omit (some portion of program logic) through optimization, when it is found to be unused or unnecessary.


ROMable

Let's C does support ROMable code and can be linked with PL/M and compatible languages via an "alien" function type.

It produces ROMable code which can be loaded directly into target systems via Intel ICE emulators.

1990, 16-/32-bit embedded processor handbook, pages 2–19:

(programming) Able to execute from read-only memory.


sequence point

(programming) Any point during a computer program's execution at which it is guaranteed that all side effects of previous evaluations will have been performed, and no side effects from subsequent evaluations have yet been performed.


Rustacean

/ɹʌsˈteɪʃən/

New Rustaceans commonly get stuck on strings for a combination of three reasons: […]

2019, Steve Klabnik, Carol Nichols, The Rust Programming Language, page 137:

We covered a whole lot of ground here in a subject that's probably the heaviest to grasp for a new Rustacean.

2019, Rahul Sharma, Vesa Kaihlavirta, Mastering Rust, page 210:

You'll find that the Rust community loves to track the progress of a certain area using their “Are We X Yet” sites. This is a tradition from the Mozilla community, which many Rustaceans are also involved in.

2020, Shing Lyu, Practical Rust Projects, page 154:

(programming, informal) A user of the Rust programming language.


retpoline

(programming, neologism) A code construct that uses return operations to prevent speculative execution.


BDUF

Big Design Up Front
w:Big Design Up Front

(software engineering) Initialism of Big Design Up Front.


tree shaking

(programming) In JavaScript, automatic dead code elimination during the build.


peepholing

peephole optimization
peephole optimization

(programming) The use of peephole optimization.


pub-sub

publish–subscribe pattern
w:publish–subscribe pattern

(software engineering) Abbreviation of publish–subscribe pattern.


FOUT

Coordinate term: FOIT

(web development) Initialism of flash of unstyled text: a brief glimpse of text in the default font before the correct font has loaded.


XBLA

(video games) Initialism of Xbox Live Arcade.


PSN

PlayStation Network
w:PlayStation Network

(video games) Initialism of PlayStation Network.


technical debt

en-noun

technical debt (countable and uncountable, plural technical debts)

An important attribute of technical debt is that it grows in an unpredictable, nonlinear fashion. Each bit of technical debt, when added to the pool of existing technical debt, might do significantly more harm than the size of that new debt might imply.

2012, Kenneth S. Rubin, Essential Scrum, Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, page 142:

(software engineering) The implied cost of additional future work caused by choosing an easy but inferior solution originally.


IDEF

Initialisms. The software-engineering term originally stood for ICAM definition but was given the new expansion integration definition in 1999.

(software engineering) A family of modelling languages in the field of systems and software engineering.


BTS

(software) Initialism of bug tracking system.


artillery game

(video games) A style of turn-based video game where players control tanks or warriors scattered over varied terrain.


succ

You can follow the pointer to see that we got it right, so that each succ and prev points to the right god.

2014, Bjarne Stroustrup, Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++, page 614:

(chiefly programming) Abbreviation of successor.


thenable

(programming) An object or function that exposes a then method returning a promise.


free list

(programming) A data structure, used in dynamic memory allocation, that connects free (unallocated) regions of memory together in a linked list.


awaitable

(programming) Able to be executed in an asynchronous manner, with the caller receiving any result at a later stage.


awaitable

(programming) An operation that can be executed in an asynchronous manner, with the caller receiving any result at a later stage.


logpoint

(programming, rare) A point in program code at which a message is logged for debugging.


respawner

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-respawner.wav

(video games) An object in the game world that respawns things.


positive lookbehind

positive lookbehind (countable and uncountable, plural positive lookbehinds)

(regular expressions) The analysis of the preceding characters' presence before the regular expression is matched (symbol: ?<=).


negative lookahead

negative lookahead (countable and uncountable, plural negative lookaheads)

Negative lookahead works just like positive lookahead, except that whereas positive lookahead matches when the regex inside the lookahead matches, negative lookahead matches when the regex inside the lookahead failed to match.

2012 August, Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan, Regular Expressions Cookbook:

(regular expressions) The analysis of the subsequent characters absence before the regular expression is matched (symbol: ?!).


positive lookahead

positive lookahead (countable and uncountable, plural positive lookaheads)

(regular expressions) The analysis of the subsequent characters presence before the regular expression is matched (symbol: ?=).


negative lookbehind

negative lookbehind (countable and uncountable, plural negative lookbehinds)

(regular expressions) The analysis of the preceding characters absence before the regular expression is matched (symbol: ?<!).


non-capturing group

non-capturing group (plural non-capturing groups)

(regular expressions) A grouping in a regular expression that doesn't store the value it matches (symbol: ?:).


positive lookaround

positive lookaround (countable and uncountable, plural positive lookarounds)

(regular expressions) The analysis of the characters presence before the regular expression is matched.


negative lookaround

negative lookaround (countable and uncountable, plural negative lookarounds)

(regular expressions) The analysis of the characters' absence before the regular expression is matched.


pixel hunting

Graphic adventure puzzle video games in the 1980s and 1990s could require the player to find objects or switches that were only a few pixels in size, in some cases hidden in the scenery.

(video games) Looking for a small, onscreen, hard-to-find object in a graphic adventure puzzle video game.

pixeljagen

to look for a small, onscreen, hard-to-find object in a graphic adventure puzzle video game


pixel hunt

pixel hunt (countable and uncountable, plural pixel hunts)

Like most adventure games, Phantasmagoria is a bit of a pixel hunt, so move your cursor around the screen to see what can be manipulated or examined in each room.

1996, Multimedia World, Multimedia World, Volume 3, Issues 2-9, PC Communications, page 89:

(..) and adjust the block size on the screen, so the visually impaired can play with big blocks, and those who like to play pixel hunt can do so with single-pixel square blocks.

2003, Alexandre Santos Lobao, Ellen Hatton, .NET Game Programming with DirectX 9.0, Apress, →ISBN, page 67:

Finding the solution to a puzzle involved figuring out how to move an object, or trying to decide in what sequence objects should be configured, or the frustrating “pixel hunt” (searching for the one spot on the screen that was a hot spot).

2012, Christy Marx, Writing for Animation, Comics, and Games, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 142:

Though far less frustrating than many text adventures, point-and-click adventure games often featured at least a few puzzles with highly illogical solutions and frequently forced players to engage in a “pixel hunt,” which refers to the process of moving and clicking the mouse all over a screen in hopes of finding a missed item or other important “hotspot.”

2012, Josiah Lebowitz, Chris Klug, Interactive Storytelling for Video Games: Proven Writing Techniques for Role Playing Games, Online Games, First Person Shooters, and more, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN, page 19:

This is similar to a blunder designers of adventure games can make. We called this a pixel''' hunt and strove mightily to avoid falling into that trap.

2014, Lee Sheldon, Character Development and Storytelling for Games, Second Edition, Cengage Learning, →ISBN, page 260:

(video games) a search for a small, onscreen, hard-to-find object in a graphic adventure puzzle video game


pixel hunt

en-verb

pixel hunt (third-person singular simple present pixel hunts, present participle pixel hunting, simple past and past participle pixel hunted)

pixel hunts (present singular third-person)
pixel hunting (participle present)
pixel hunted (participle past)
pixel hunted (past)

Unfortunately, once you actually go about solving the cases, the game falls into the trap that have been the bane of click n' point adventure games for years; illogical puzzles and pixel hunting.

2006 December, GameAxis Unwired, GameAxis Unwired, SPH Magazines, →ISSN, page 53:

We totally relate to gamers who hesitate to devote a few hours to pixel hunting to solve puzzles.

2009, PC Gamer, PC Gamer, volume 16, GP Publications, page 22:

(video games) to look for a small, onscreen, hard-to-find object in a graphic adventure puzzle video game


home console

A video game console designed for domestic use in a fixed location, as opposed to handheld consoles or arcade consoles.


handheld console

en-noun

handheld console (plural handheld consoles)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-handheld console.wav

A portable video game console, designed to be easily carried, as opposing to home consoles.


freelist

(programming) Alternative form of free list


remotable

(programming) Offering support for remoting.


kebab case

In allusion to the appearance of a shish kebab, with various food items assembled on a skewer. Additionally, the coincidence that kebabs and camels are both archetypally Near Eastern was probably not lost on the computer programmers who coined the names kebab case and camel case.

(programming) The practice of writing identifiers using hyphens to separate words.


ludomusicologist

From ludo- (“relating to games”) + musicologist.


ludomusicological

Analyzable as ludo- (“relating to games”) + musicological or ludomusicology + -ical

To demonstrate the scope of ludomusicological inquiry, I will first consider what musical performance and digital gameplay have in common as alternatives, supplements, or antonyms for "work."

2013, Nicholas Cook, Richard Pettengill, Taking It to the Bridge: Music as Performance, University of Michigan Press, page 284:

From a ludomusicological perspective, all these forms of play forge connections that enable us to historicize the new and renovate the old via techniques of projection and retrojection.

2016, Roger Moseley, Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo, Univ of California Press, pages 65-66:

In the PhD project, the on-going process between chiptune and fan identity is understood through a (ludo)musicological adaptation of Rosi Braidotti’s theory of nomadic subjectivity […].

2018, George Reid, “Chiptune: The Ludomusical Shaping of Identity”, in Malcolm Sutherland, editor, The Computer Games Journal, volume 7, number 4, Springer New York, →DOI, retrieved 2019-01-04, page 281:


ludomusical

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-ludomusical.wav

From ludo- (“relating to games”) + musical.

As both toys and machines, these guitar controllers undermine the discourse of authenticity so central to rock music's mythology, instead forcing players to confront the recursively mediated quality of their ludomusical experiences.”

2013, Nicholas Cook, Richard Pettengill, Taking It to the Bridge: Music as Performance, University of Michigan Press, →ISBN, page 284:

Reflecting on the ways in which such ludomusical relationships are structured, Koji Kondo, the composer for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. for the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System, has observed that both characters' movements and sequenced music in digital games are synchronized to the CPU's clock.

2014, K.J. Donnelly et al., Music In Video Games: Studying Play, Routledge, page 55:

Chopin has formed an unexpectedly persistent locus of ludomusical encounters that unfold at keyboards, whether they involve the relaying of single bits of information, the activation of complex acoustic events, the realization of the ineffable, or all of the above.

2016, Roger Moseley, Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo, Univ of California Press, page 59:

Relating to ludomusicology or music-based games or video games in particular; ludomusicological.


SFINAE

substitution failure is not an error
w:substitution failure is not an error

(programming) Initialism of substitution failure is not an error.


ludomusicality

From ludo- (“relating to games”) + musicality.

From the flip book to anime, from toys to works of art, and from congas to taiko drums, the course of each element that plays into Nintendo's ludomusicality can be traced along paths that wind through space and time.

2014, K.J. Donnelly et al., Music In Video Games: Studying Play, Routledge, page 67:

In turn, digital games can illuminate these historical manifestations of ludomusicality, suggesting alternative methods of construing chronological relations that recognize the ludic forces of improvisation and performance as well as the textual and material formations that have enabled and constrained the transmission of music.

2016, Roger Moseley, Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo, Univ of California Press, page 12:

As such, providing an insight into this relationship is the intention of this article, which demonstrates the theoretical framework from my larger PhD project on chiptune, fan identity, and its perpetuation through ludomusicality.

The way in which music is played and composed in the context of games, musicality specifically in game or video game music, or the relationship between play and music.


ludomusicology

Blend of ludology (“the study of games”) + musicology (“the study of music”). Coined circa 2007.

blend

[…] the discipline of ludomusicology might emerge as a way to bring insights yielded from studying musical performance to bear on how ludic experiences are constructed and represented […].

2013, Nicholas Cook, Richard Pettengill, Taking It to the Bridge: Music as Performance, University of Michigan Press, page 304:

Having spent seven years researching video game music, I admit I increasingly find myself wondering these days whether a different kind of ludomusicology is possible […].

2016, Michael Austin, Music Video Games: Performance, Politics, and Play, Bloomsbury Publishing USA:

The swell of film musicological scholarship in the past twenty years (and the more recent surge in music–video studies and ludomusicology) has brought with it a corresponding profusion of music analysis, some informal, some extremely meticulous.

2017, Miguel Mera et al., editors, The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, Taylor & Francis, page 497:

The scientific study of video game music.


tube shooter

(video games) A shoot 'em up game in which the player advances through a tube or tunnel while moving around its circumference.


sandwich testing

(software engineering) A hybrid form of integration testing that combines top-down and bottom-up approaches.


big bang testing

(software engineering) A form of integration testing in which the individual modules are linked together and tested as a whole, without first being tested independently.


lifebar

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-lifebar.wav


anticheat

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-anticheat.wav

When we transition over to EA anticheat you won't notice anything different when logging in and playing, but this transition will enable our teams to be better equipped to find and remove players that don't play fair.

2023 September 29, “EA Anticheat and Battlefield 2042”, in Battlefield 2042:

(video games) A piece of software that detects and prevents cheating.


pseudohandle

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pseudohandle.wav

(programming) A special value that can be treated as a handle (e.g. to identify a process) but is not a true handle.


CRPG

roleplaying game
roleplaying game#English

(games) Initialism of computer/console roleplaying game.


Elvis operator

The notation ?: humorously reinterpreted as an emoticon representing the eyes and hairstyle of Elvis Presley.

(programming, informal) A binary operator that returns its first operand if that operand evaluates to true, and otherwise evaluates and returns its second operand.


subproperty

The Origin property represents a coordinate and has X and Y subproperties.

(chiefly programming) A property of another property.


pro-gamer

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-pro-gamer.wav

(video games) A professional player of video games; a competitive video game player; an ethlete.


bug scrub

(software engineering) A regular meeting to discuss and triage unfixed problems in the software.


Yoda condition

/ˌjəʊdə kənˈdɪʃn̩/

/ˌjəʊdə kənˈdɪʃən/

An allusion to the somewhat grammatically reversed speech style of Yoda, a character in the Star Wars franchise—for example, “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.” The term was possibly coined by Félix Cloutier (username “zneak”) in 2010, based on Yoda notation which is claimed to have been coined by Thomas M. Tuerke and published online in 2006.

A great convention to stick to, the Yoda condition requires you to keep the comparison variable on the right side of the conditional statement.

2013, Adam Onishi, “Getting Started”, in Pro WordPress Theme Development, Berkeley, Calif.: Apress, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 14:

A computer programmer is trying to explain a recent problem to a journalist friend, and she says, "This jimmy had put in Yoda conditions and had been refactoring my previous work so that in the end it was just hooker code." The journalist friend looks baffled.

2014, Kirk Hazen, “The Winding Paths of Language in Education”, in An Introduction to Language (Linguistics in the World), Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN, page 331:

// what happens if the debug parameter is removed // from the request and becomes a null? // should really be using a Yoda Condition here ;)

2015, Jim Manico, August Detlefsen, “Access Control”, in Iron-clad Java: Building Secure Web Applications (Oracle Press), New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Education, →ISBN, page 66:

Writing if(isHungry = true) by accident will set isHungry to true every time the if statement is hit! To avoid this possibility, we can just write if(isHungry). Alternatively, some (wise) people use what are called Yoda conditions to check an if statement: if(true == isHungry). The reason we write the if statement in this way is that, if we accidentally write if(true = isHungry), this will generate a compiler error, catching the mistake.

2015 February, William Sherif, “If, Else, and Switch”, in Learning C++ by Creating Games with UE4: Learn C++ Programming with a Fun, Real-world Application that Allows You to Create Your Own Games!, Birmingham, West Midlands: Packt Publishing, →ISBN, page 48:

Leo grimaces at Caleb. "I never asked—how did you figure it out?" / "Yoda conditions. You may as well have signed your name." At my blank look, Caleb says, "Your boyfriend writes his code backwards."

2020, Amy Noelle Parks, “Evie”, in The Quantum Weirdness of the Almost-kiss, New York, N.Y.: Amulet Books, Abrams Books, →ISBN:

Programmers normally write conditions such as x == 7 with the variable name (an lvalue) on the left and the literal (an rvalue) on the right. Placing the literal on the left, as in 7 == x (which is syntactically correct and is sometimes called a "Yoda condition"), enables the compiler to issue an error if you accidentally replace the == operator with =. The compiler treats this as a compilation error because you can't change a literal's value.

2022, Paul Deitel, Harvey Deitel, C++20 for Programmers: An Objects-natural Approach (Deitel Developer Series), Boston, Mass.: Pearson Prentice Hall, →ISBN:

(programming, informal) A logical condition with the usual order of operands reversed for various reasons, such as avoiding accidental misuse of = (assignment) instead of == (equality), a mistake that is harder to spot when using the normal order of operands.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones


literate programming

(programming) A programming paradigm in which a program is given as an explanation of the program logic in a natural language (such as English), interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which compilable representation can be generated.


vanity item

(video games) An item in a game that is purely cosmetic, not affecting the player's abilities in any way.


user story

(software engineering) In software development, a natural language description of how an end user uses a system feature.


GCN

(initialism, video games) Nintendo GameCube, a sixth-generation home console


vidkid

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Like the pool sharks and pinball wizards before them, "vidkids" have invaded the world and are just as controversial.

In addition to the obvious distraction of the laptops in the classroom, vidkids now have an even more invidious distraction […]

2006, Compendium of Continuing Education in Dentistry:

Similarly, in Joystick Nation, dedicated to her "vidkid little brother," author J. C. Herz states: […]

2008, Yasmin B. Kafai, Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming:

(slang) A young person with an interest in playing video games.


RVO

(programming) Initialism of return value optimization.


deagle

en-verb

deagle (third-person singular simple present deagles, present participle deagling, simple past and past participle deagled)

deagles (present singular third-person)
deagling (participle present)
deagled (participle past)
deagled (past)

Someone from the FortniteBR subreddit recently posted a short clip of his gameplay where his character deagled another player in the head.

2018 April 16, Erwin Cruz, “'Fortnite:' Epic looking on hit reg changes; Meteor showers spotted”, in Blasting News:

Don’t say stupid things because you got deagled in a scrim.

2019 February 15, Alan Bernal, quoting Nick ‘NICKMERCS’ Kolcheff, “NICKMERCS hits out at Fortnite PC players for bashing console players”, in Dexerto:

(transitive, slang, video games) To shoot with a Desert Eagle.


stringable

en-adj

stringable (comparative more stringable, superlative most stringable)

more stringable (comparative)
most stringable (superlative)

(programming) Able to be converted to a string of text characters.


hijinxs

A nonstandard respelling; considering fairly recent citations, possibly reinforced by "Jungle Hijinxs", the name of the first level of the popular 1994 video game Donkey Kong Country.

Peter Clifford needs to take down Mike Brunley and his carnival of carnal hijinxs to make Upton's exposure truly sensational. If this is accomplished then Peter Clifford will see the door to greater opportunity open for him and, as we well know, […]

2001, Leo F. White, Dirty Pictures, BookBaby, →ISBN:

[S]ocial hijinxs was kept pretty much to a minimum. We had a lot of fun, but we pretty much knew when not to cross the line. We never hurt anyone or did harm to any property.

2005, Susan Cramer, Confessions of a Special Ed Teacher, Trafford Publishing, →ISBN, page 63:

“For hijinxs and crazy shenanigans that'll leave you chuckling to the bewilderment of those around you, I highly suggest this book.” — Love Romance Passion

2009, Sara Angelini, Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy, Sourcebooks, Inc., →ISBN, page 346:

Iowa just continued its streak of picking the notnominee. In addition his voting "violation" flier, and now these caucus hijinxs lend credence to what his other scumbag politician jerks have said about him being a bigger jerk.

2016, Kimberly Bratton, Donald Trump: An American Love-fest, Lulu Press, Inc, →ISBN:

You know those movies where the goofy housemate reads a book of spells on Halloween and hijinxs ensue?

2018, L. J. McLeod, “The Perils of Having a Roommate Obsessed with the Occult on Hallows’ Eve”, in T. C. Phillips, editor, Behold the Nightmare: Special Halloween Issue (Specul8: Central Queensland Journal of Speculative Fiction), Rockhampton, Qld.: Specul8 Publishing, →ISBN, page 73:

(nonstandard, uncommon) Alternative spelling of hijinks


noise word

For example, in the COBOL goto statement, written GO TO , the keyword GO is required, but TO is an optional noise word which carries no information and is used only to improve readability.

1975, Terrence W. Pratt, Programming Languages: Design and Implementation, page 381:

(programming) A word that may be included in source code for clarity but does not change the meaning.


archaeogaming

From archaeo- + gaming, coined by Andrew Reinhard in 2013.

The study of archaeology as it relates to video games and their history.


analog stick

(video games) A small potentiometer-based joystick mounted on a game controller.


health point

Each player begins with 30 health points, and the first player to reduce their opponent's health to zero wins the match.

2014 June 5, John Bedford, “Hearthstone - beginner's guide, classes, Hero Powers, card types, game modes”, in Eurogamer:

Evolution takes a cue from rudimentary RPG mechanics, granting more damaging attacks, more health points, and a stipend of skill points to enhance each of the beast's four unique abilities.

2015 February 14, Steven Strom, “Evolve Review: Middle of the food chain”, in Ars Technica:


(video games) Initialism of one-life clear: the feat of playing through a video game from start to finish without ever losing a life.


drop-in/drop-out

(video games) A style of competitive or cooperative multiplayer game where players can join or leave a game at any time without incurring a penalty for themselves or other players.


horde mode

en-noun

horde mode (countable and uncountable, plural horde modes)

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(video games) A style of cooperative multiplayer gameplay where players work together to defend a target or fight through waves of enemies.


action point

(video games) A point that the player can "spend" on performing various in-game actions, such as spell-casting, which require various numbers of points.


score attack

(video games) A gameplay mode in which the player is challenged to obtain the highest score they can.


rhythm game

(video games) A game that challenges the player to press buttons etc. to match a timed sequence indicated on the screen, usually in order to make the game character perform music or dance moves.


laner

Though teams from China have hoisted the Summoner’s Cup, which goes to the Worlds champion, it’s always been South Korean mid laners who have starred on those teams. Erzberger said Knight wants to be the first Chinese mid laner to hoist that trophy — and maybe become a national treasure himself.

2023 October 11, Daniel Brown, “League of Legends Worlds: Can ‘Golden Left Hand’ top ‘Faker’ to earn a grand slam?”, in The New York Times:

(video games) In MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games, a player who focuses on enemy characters traversing a particular "lane" or path on the map.


Switch

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(video games) Ellipsis of Nintendo Switch.


dereferencer

(programming) Any operator that dereferences something.


battle pass

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(video games) A form of in-game monetization that provides additional content for a game through a tiered system, rewarding the player with in-game items as they complete specific challenges.


masocore

(video games) A genre of games, with various playstyles, where survival and winning are intentionally made extremely difficult.


survival game

(video games) An action-oriented game set in a hostile open-world environment, where players generally begin with minimal equipment and must locate or craft further resources in order to survive, sometimes in competition with other players.


PVE

(video games) Alternative letter-case form of PvE.


ggez

GGEZ is toxic and should be bannable but saying that on this subreddit will get you downvoted and called a pussy.

[2022 April 29, “Is saying GGEZ considered toxic?”, in Reddit, r/leagueoflegends, archived from the original on 2023-11-17:

(video games) Abbreviation of good game, easy (used to taunt the loser).


ggwp

We had an amazing game with @AnonymoEsports thank you so much guys ggwp! 👑

2023 November 17, @Z10esports, Twitter, archived from the original on 2023-11-17:

(video games) Initialism of good game, well played.


pervasive game

(gaming, video games) Any game that blends the gameplay experience with the real world.


PBAOE

(video games, board games) Initialism of point blank area of effect (when the affected region is centred on the same character who is casting the spell etc.)


superboss

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Dragons stand head and shoulders above every other regular enemy type, dwarfed only by our game's final boss (whom we'll discuss at length later in the chapter) and its superboss.

2016, Darrin Perez, Beginning RPG Maker MV, page 285:

(video games) A very powerful boss character.


cut-in

(video games, by extension) A visual sequence focusing on a character's face or body while they perform a special move.


as-if rule

(programming) A rule by which compilers are allowed to apply any optimizing transformation to a program provided that it makes no change to the observable behavior of the program.


NOP sled

(programming) A series of identical values in memory that instruct the CPU to take no action and proceed to the next instruction, used in shellcode etc. to increase the chances of any random instruction access executing the sequence that follows.


DVCS

(software) Initialism of data validation and certification server.

(software) Initialism of distributed version control system.


aspect-oriented programming

(programming) A programming paradigm that aims to increase modularity by allowing the separation of cross-cutting concerns.