:BAD: /B-A-D/ /adj./ [IBM: acronym, `Broken As Designed'] Said of a program that is {bogus} because of bad design and misfeatures rather than because of bugginess. See {working as designed}.
:Bad Thing: /n./ [from the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody "1066 And All That">[ Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalized, as in "Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing". Oppose {Good Thing}. British correspondents confirm that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and prob. therefore {Right Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond.
:bag on the side: /n./ [prob. originally related to a
colostomy bag] An extension to an established hack that
is supposed to add some functionality to the original. Usually
derogatory, implying that the original was being overextended and
should have been thrown away, and the new product is ugly,
inelegant, or bloated. Also /v./ phrase, `to hang a bag on the
side
[of]'. "C++? That's just a bag on the side of C …."
"They want me to hang a bag on the side of the accounting
system."
:bagbiter: /bag'bi:t-*r/ /n./ 1. Something, such as a program or a computer, that fails to work, or works in a remarkably clumsy manner. "This text editor won't let me make a file with a line longer than 80 characters! What a bagbiter!" 2. A person who has caused you some trouble, inadvertently or otherwise, typically by failing to program the computer properly. Synonyms: {loser}, {cretin}, {chomper}. 3. `bite the bag' /vi./ To fail in some manner. "The computer keeps crashing every five minutes." "Yes, the disk controller is really biting the bag." The original loading of these terms was almost undoubtedly obscene, possibly referring to the scrotum, but in their current usage they have become almost completely sanitized.
ITS's `lexiphage' program was the first and to date only known example of a program *intended* to be a bagbiter.
:bagbiting: /adj./ Having the quality of a {bagbiter}. "This bagbiting system won't let me compute the factorial of a negative number." Compare {losing}, {cretinous}, {bletcherous}, `barfucious' (under {barfulous}) and `chomping' (under {chomp}).
:balloonian variable: /n./ [Commodore users; perh. a deliberate phonetic mangling of `boolean variable'?] Any variable that doesn't actually hold or control state, but must nevertheless be declared, checked, or set. A typical balloonian variable started out as a flag attached to some environment feature that either became obsolete or was planned but never implemented. Compatibility concerns (or politics attached to same) may require that such a flag be treated as though it were {live}.
:bamf: /bamf/ 1. [from X-Men comics; originally "bampf">[
/interj./ Notional sound made by a person or object teleporting in
or
out of the hearer's vicinity. Often used in {virtual reality}
(esp. {MUD}) electronic {fora} when a character wishes to
make a dramatic entrance or exit. 2. The sound of magical
transformation, used in virtual reality {fora} like MUDs. 3. In
MUD circles, "bamf" is also used to refer to the act by which a
MUD server sends a special notification to the MUD client to switch
its connection to another server ("I'll set up the old site to
just bamf people over to our new location."). 4. Used by MUDders
on occasion in a more general sense related to sense 3, to refer to
directing someone to another location or resource ("A user was
asking about some technobabble so I bamfed them to
http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon.html.")
:banana label: /n./ The labels often used on the sides of {macrotape} reels, so called because they are shaped roughly like blunt-ended bananas. This term, like macrotapes themselves, is still current but visibly headed for obsolescence.
:banana problem: /n./ [from the story of the little girl who said "I know how to spell `banana', but I don't know when to stop">[. Not knowing where or when to bring a production to a close (compare {fencepost error}). One may say `there is a banana problem' of an algorithm with poorly defined or incorrect termination conditions, or in discussing the evolution of a design that may be succumbing to featuritis (see also {creeping elegance}, {creeping featuritis}). See item 176 under {HAKMEM}, which describes a banana problem in a {Dissociated Press} implementation. Also, see {one-banana problem} for a superficially similar but unrelated usage.