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From: bob@cadovax.UUCP (Bob "Kat" Kaplan)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.nlang
Subject: Definition of "kludge"
Message-ID: <445@cadovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Mar-85 12:12:08 EST
Article-I.D.: cadovax.445
Posted: Mon Mar 11 12:12:08 1985
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cw@vaxwaller.UUCP (Carl Weidling) <220@vaxwaller.UUCP> laments:

>     But what dictionaries define the word kludge? (I'm not even sure
>     how to spell it because I can't find it in any dictionaries.

The word is defined in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.  It is 
also to be found in The Book of Jargon, by Don Ethan Miller (MacMillan, 1981).

A brief article on the word also appears in the Encyclopedia of Computer
Science (ed. by Anthony Ralston, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976).  In that
volume, F. Gruenberger writes as follows:

KLUDGE

    The word "kludge" is a term coined by Jackson Granholm in an article
"How to Design a Kludge," in _Datamation_ (February 1962).  The definition
is given as "an ill-sorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a
distressing whole."  The design of every computer contains some anomalies
that prove to be annoying to the users and which the designer wishes he had
done differently.  If there are enough of these, the machine is called a
"kludge."
    By extension, the term has now come to be applied to programs,
documentation, and even computer centers, so that the definition is now
"an ill-conceived and hence unreliable system that has accumulated through
patchwork, expediency, and poor planning."
    The first kludge article triggered five others ("How to Maintain a Kludge,"
etc.) in subsequent issues of _Datamation_.  Four of the articles may be
found in the book, _Faith,_Hope,_and_Parity_, edited by Jack Moshman, Thompson
Book Company, 1966.
-- 
Bob Kaplan

"Where is it written that we must destroy ourselves?"