Cruft

Poll without page-refresh

	del.icio.us
	Digg
	Furl
	Reddit
	Rojo
	Add to OnlyWire

This article is about a computing term. For other uses, see Cruft (disambiguation).

"Fancruft" redirects here. For the Wikipedia essay regarding fancruft, see WP:Fancruft.

Cruft is computing jargon for code, data, or software of poor quality.^[1] The term is also used for the fluff that accumulates on computer equipment. ^[2]

1 Computing
2 Etymology
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

Computing

Cruft is computer jargon for something (especially code) that is obsolete, redundant, over-complex, incomprehensible, or superfluous.^[3] The FreeBSD handbook refers to stale object code as cruft, which occurs when code is changed, but the program is not recompiled^[4] - this can cause the BSD equivalent of DLL hell.^{[citation needed]}

When referring to URLs, 'cruft' is the parts which are only relevant or meaningful to the people who created the site, such as implementation details of the computer system which serves the page. Examples of URL cruft include file extensions such as .php or .html, and internal organisational details such as /public/ or /~users/john/work/drafts/.

Cruft can also be used to describe the unused and out of date hardware and computing paraphernalia that is collected by geeks either through upgrading, inheritance or simple acquisition, both deliberate and through circumstance.

Harvard Cruft Laboratory

Etymology

The origin of the term is uncertain, but it may be derived from Harvard University Cruft Laboratory, which was the Harvard Physics Department's radar lab during World War II. As late as the early 1990s, unused technical equipment could be seen stacked in front of Cruft Hall's windows. According to the student body, if the place filled with useless machinery is called Cruft Hall, the machinery itself must be cruft. This image of "discarded technical clutter" quickly migrated from hardware to software.^[5]

Another possible origin is that the word evokes the words crust, fluff and scruffy.^[1] The latter word is the source of similar words in Jamaican English such as cruff, meaning scurfy, coarse or uncouth.^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2008, <http://books.google.com/books?id=qZdhGQAACAAJ>, "Code, data, or software of poor quality."
^ Eric Raymond (1996), New Hackers Dictionary, MIT Press, <http://books.google.com/books?id=POlUJW3Z9McC>, "When the steel ball on the mouse had picked up enough cruft to be unreliable, the mouse was doused in cleaner."
^ "cruft". The Jargon File, version 4.4.7.
^ "20.4.16.6. What do I do if something goes wrong?". FreeBSD Handbook, Third Edition. Retrieved on 2007-08-18.
^ "crufty". The Jargon File, version 4.4.7.