:suitable win: n. See {win}.
:suitably small: [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came up with a correct full-screen display, and one publicly exclaimed: "It works!" Then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add: "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}.
:sun lounge: [Great Britain] n. The room where all the Sun workstations live. The humor in this term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use to describe a solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered together give off an amazing amount of heat.
:sun-stools: n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. {X}, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}.
:sunspots: n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess." 2. Also the cause of {bit rot} —- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bits in memory. See {cosmic rays}, {phase of the moon}.
:superprogrammer: n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example, one programmer might be able to write an average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term `superprogrammer' is more commonly used within such places as IBM than in the hacker community. It tends to stress na"ive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job *done* —- and to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 lines of code do more or less useful work than three lines that do the {Right Thing}. Hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and {wizard}.
:superuser: [UNIX] n. Syn. {root}, {avatar}. This usage has spread to non-UNIX environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on. A more specific term than {wheel}.
:support: n. After-sale handholding; something many software
vendors promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people
are useless —- because by the time a hacker calls support he or
she will usually know the relevant manuals better than the support
people (sadly, this is *not* a joke or exaggeration). A
hacker's idea of `support' is a t^ete-`a-t^ete with the
software's designer.
:Suzie COBOL: /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM: prob. from Frank Zappa's
`Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who
knows everything except the value of comments in plain English.
Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid accusations of
sexism) `Sammy Cobol' or (in some non-IBM circles) `Cobol Charlie'.
2. [proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to
{J. Random Hacker}.
:swab: /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte'
instruction, as immortalized in the `dd(1)' option `conv=swab'
(see {dd})] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping
bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perform this
action, or anything functionally equivalent to it. See also
{big-endian}, {little-endian}, {middle-endian},
{bytesexual}.