BSD Fortune - Quotes from the Jargon File
The Jargon file is a glossary of hacker slang. This page will randomly select a term from the jargon file. You can find out more about the Jargon file at Wikipedia or get the whole thing at Eric Raymond's home page. Eric maintains the Jargon File and published a printed version called "The New Hacker's Dictionary"
Randomly Generated Fortune
:flowchart:: /n./ [techspeak] An archaic form of visual
control-flow specification employing arrows and `speech
balloons' of various shapes. Hackers never use flowcharts,
consider them extremely silly, and associate them with {COBOL}
programmers, {card walloper}s, and other lower forms of life.
This attitude follows from the observations that flowcharts (at
least from a hacker's point of view) are no easier to read than
code, are less precise, and tend to fall out of sync with the code
(so that they either obfuscate it rather than explaining it, or
require extra maintenance effort that doesn't improve the code).
See also {pdl}, sense 3.
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