:stone knives and bearskins: /n./ [from the Star Trek Classic episode "The City on the Edge of Forever">[ A term traditionally used to describe (and deprecate) computing environments that are grotesquely primitive in light of what is known about good ways to design things. As in "Don't get too used to the facilities here. Once you leave SAIL it's stone knives and bearskins as far as the eye can see". Compare {steam-powered}.
:stoppage: /sto'p*j/ /n./ Extreme {lossage} that renders something (usually something vital) completely unusable. "The recent system stoppage was caused by a {fried} transformer."
:store: /n./ [prob. from techspeak `main store'] In some varieties of Commonwealth hackish, the preferred synonym for {core}. Thus, `bringing a program into store' means not that one is returning shrink-wrapped software but that a program is being {swap}ped in.
:strided: /stri:'d*d/ /adj./ [scientific computing] Said of a sequence of memory reads and writes to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by a constant interval called the `stride length'. These can be a worst-case access pattern for the standard memory-caching schemes when the stride length is a multiple of the cache line size. Strided references are often generated by loops through an array, and (if your data is large enough that access-time is significant) it can be worthwhile to tune for better locality by inverting double loops or by partially unrolling the outer loop of a loop nest. This usage is borderline techspeak; the related term `memory stride' is definitely techspeak.
:stroke: /n./ Common name for the slant (`/', ASCII 0101111)
character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
:strudel: /n./ Common (spoken) name for the at-sign (`@',
ASCII 1000000) character. See {ASCII} for other synonyms.
:stubroutine: /stuhb'roo-teen/ /n./ [contraction of `stub subroutine'] Tiny, often vacuous placeholder for a subroutine that is to be written or fleshed out later.
:studly: /adj./ Impressive; powerful. Said of code and designs which exhibit both complexity and a virtuoso flair. Has connotations similar to {hairy} but is more positive in tone. Often in the emphatic `most studly' or as noun-form `studliness'. "Smail 3.0's configuration parser is most studly."
:studlycaps: /stuhd'lee-kaps/ /n./ A hackish form of silliness similar to {BiCapitalization} for trademarks, but applied randomly and to arbitrary text rather than to trademarks. ThE oRigiN and SigNificaNce of thIs pRacTicE iS oBscuRe.
:stunning: /adj./ Mind-bogglingly stupid. Usually used in sarcasm. "You want to code *what* in ADA? That's a … stunning idea!"