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2339

answers:

73

OK I know this could get some votes down, but as a time waster, who has some good Acronyms.

My Favourite:
TWaIN: Technology Without an Interesting Name

+14  A: 

Hmmm... ID-10-T comes to mind.

Nescio
I use this one a lot. Commonly during discussions about end users.
Phil.Wheeler
+3  A: 

CRUD Wikipedia entry

Will M
+2  A: 

The recursive acronyms are (briefly) amusing, e.g., PNG: "PNG Not GIF". Worth half a snort, at least.

Jason Etheridge
Recursive acronyms: where da party at.
maybe so, but PNG = Portable Network Graphics
Ferruccio
And don't forget PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. *Snort*
John McCollum
Or rather, *sno*
John McCollum
That is 3/5 of a snort. You mean snc
Ambuoroko
+1  A: 

Blob Wikipedia entry

Will M
A: 

IBM, in their early days, acronymized everything. So they had an AMD, air movement device, because it was so hard to spell fan. I don't know if this is urban myth or not.

paxdiablo
+16  A: 

OK, so it wasn't the real definition, but PCMCIA once got labeled "People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms"

Andrew
+7  A: 

POJO (Plain Old Java Object) kinda cracked me up the first time I heard it...

KG
+13  A: 

In a code sense, I definitely prefer KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

-Nicholas

Nicholas Flynt
A word? You do realize that kiss is a word, don't you? That makes KISS an acronym, which makes it off topic among most of those other answers.
Windows programmer
+34  A: 

From the depths of customer support hell ....

PEBKAC = Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

deadbug
I now find myself wishing you could have polls in questions purely to see what % of people were hitting this question to give that answer
insin
That was going to be my answer... :D
xan
PICNIC (problem in chair not in keyboard) - way better due to being a real word :)
Aidan Ryan
SBS in swedish :) "Skit bakom spakarna" = "Shit behind the levers"
Ace
@Aidan: I think this should be "Problem In Chair Not In Computer"...
Al
@Aidan/Al: Hilarious!
deadbug
+1  A: 

IBM has their CUPRMID ratings for software releases:

Capability
Usability
Performance
Reliability
Maintainability
Instalability
Documentation

This has actually gotten a lot more complicated since I left the project management side of software development.

paxdiablo
+9  A: 

DRY is my favorite.

VVS
`DRY` is also quite a good one.
Steve Melnikoff
+6  A: 

Gnu's Not UNIX (GNU) and Xinu is not UNIX (XINU) are two recursive ones that I liked.

paxdiablo
A: 

@Jason - if you're mentioning recursive acronyms, I think props are due to GNU! FSF

Will M
It's a bit of a shame FSF itself isn't a recursive acronym, though.
Kodein
+5  A: 

BAD - broken as designed, program that matches the design perfectly, but the design is rubbish.

paxdiablo
You too? Giving a correct answer? What is this world coming to when 3 of the 50 answers are actually valid?
Windows programmer
+5  A: 

DDT, the dynamic debugging tool (from CP/M if I remember correctly), was funny besause it was used for killing bugs, as was the chemical DDT when sprayed on crops.

paxdiablo
+1  A: 

IJW, "It Just Works"

Microsoft's term for Managed Code to unmanaged Code transition.

mattlant
+4  A: 

Back in the day, EMACS was "eight megabytes and continuously swapping", but that doesn't seem such a bad thing any more.

And ACID always sounds more fun than it is.

BTW. Programmers are n00bs when it comes to slang abbreviations.

Unsliced
EMACS stands for Emacs Makes A Computer Slow.
Windows programmer
It can also stand for "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift"
sykora
or Eventually Mallocs All Computer Storage
TheBeardyMan
+10  A: 

WWW - because it takes so long to pronounce

GvS
It's interesting actually that the acronym has more syllables than the phrase for which it stands, and yes, it definitely takes longer to pronounce.
Marcin
It doesn't in Dutch... ;-)
peSHIr
In German it's shorter was well. There's a nice Wikipedia article about the pronounciation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_%22www%22
Joachim Sauer
+30  A: 

RTFM (Read the ....)

I wish their was a button in stackoverflow which has RTFM on it. Lots of questions could then be answered with one push on a button.

Frans
read the fine manual
Ronny
There are plenty of questions that can be answered by reading the manual or the spec, but sometimes people don't mind answering questions if they already know the answer and know the asker would spend much more time trying to find it in the documentation.
Albert
A: 

An old company I used to work for had a 3D surface modelling package called SWANS.

= Surfaces With A Nice Shape.

Greg Whitfield
+10  A: 

WINE Is Not an Emulator

MCSE - Minesweeper Consultant, Solitaire Expert

But some of the favs around work are not so programming based but highly relevant for a client-driven environment:

BLGF - Bad Luck, Get F...razzeled

GLWT - Good Luck With That

Slace
Upvote for MCSE! ^^
Arnis L.
+11  A: 

I like YAGNI. I always say it to myself when coding. And I like the way it sounds :D

Rob Cooper
A: 

Oh, and of course STFW.. One that will become increasingly historic thanks to StackOverflow. Soon people will think the web is StackOverflow as people lose the ability to Google :D

Rob Cooper
+9  A: 

YACC - Yet Another Compiler Compiler

GvS
+20  A: 

WTF.

Unsliced
Especially considering how many different name he has given the site...
KTC
+14  A: 

TLA - Three Letter Acronym! Many times in a tech meeting I'll ask (with an innocent look on my face) "What's the TLA for that?" Some get it, most don't. TLA is the Three Letter Acronym for Three Letter Acronym. Gets a laugh or a snort every time.

There's also ETLA, the Extended Three Letter Acronyn
Skizz
Better known as XTLA.
Motti
I actually worked on a project where TLA stood for Top Level Architecture. I think the chief architect who invented the acronym pulled a joke on management, but he never admitted it.
starblue
Also: 2LA - two letter acronym :-)
Steve Melnikoff
FETLA - further extended three letter acronym
Martin Beckett
With the irony being it's not actually an acronym, it's an abbreviation.
Unsliced
+5  A: 

BASIC - Beginners All purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

Jonas Gulle
Wow, another correct answer, therefore disqualified from keeping company with the vast majority of these answers.
Windows programmer
+2  A: 

A system I worked on had components called the SPU and the SHTS. When pronounced phonetically, they said a lot about the system.

metao
+1  A: 

@Unsliced - I also heard that EMACS stands for Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift in reference to the chords you have to play on your keyboard to run certain commands.

Although Ctrl-Alt-Shift-5 for regular expression replace seems perfectly natural now.

Dave Webb
+13  A: 

CDD = Career Driven Development

Basically it means choosing the technologies for a project based on what will look best on your CV. :)

cletus
jajaja nice, it really happends
panchicore
+1  A: 

ACME

I love package names such as "com.acme.something"

akr
A Company Making Everything!
Ferruccio
It's Disney's invention and it does not mean ANYTHING. Ferruccio: Your version is the most common for this.
furtelwart
+8  A: 
  • I18N - "Internationalization" (I followed by 18 letters followed by an N)

  • L10N - "Localization" (L followed by 10 letter followed by an N)

  • Z-1A - "A" (Z followed by -1 letter followed by an A)

Motti
Agree. This is the best, or worst one.
PeterAllenWebb
Wow, finally I understand these... :]
binOr
jummm interesting :)
panchicore
+1  A: 

My favorites

UTFSE = Use The F**ng Search-Engine

FWIW = For whatever it's worth

GASMOP = Go and sniff my open port

SNAFU = Situation Normal All F**ed Up

ZOMG = OMG with Z pressed instead of Shift

DeeCee
+8  A: 

Campaign for the Reduction of Acronym Proliferation

Seb Rose
+4  A: 

Fast Action Response Team

Mike Reedell
We actually had a brief time at one place I worked that they wanted to create a Special High-Intensity Team. Thankfully that idea got nixed.
John Biazo
+9  A: 

As a variation of PEBKAC there is the ever popular PICNIC - Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.

Jason Z
Hey, is this answer allowed? I mean PICNIC, being a word, being an acronym and everything...
Windows programmer
A: 

TDDD - ToDo Driven Development. Also, from broadcast but IT applicable

  • FUD - F'n Useless Device.
  • BITFU - Blew It The F' Up
CAD bloke
A: 

The legendary error code KMACYOYO

Hamish Smith
+14  A: 

without FUBAR where would all our variable names for code samples come from?

Hamish Smith
That's actually a part - in the DEC PDP-11/34, there was a Failed UniBus Adapting Resistor
David
+3  A: 

I like SAX = Simple API XML. So its a three letter acronym for "Simple Application Programming Interface Extensible Markup Language".

Andrew
And that's simple, right? ;-)
peSHIr
+2  A: 

JFGI Just F'in Google It. With accompanying website.

SKapsal
and it's companion site letmegooglethatforyou.com
Kevin
A: 

Slightly off topic, but close ...

Unix - find processes a specific notorious user is running that are slowing down your perfectly fast server ...

ps -fu [username]

SKapsal
+1  A: 

MIPS - Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed

Graeme Perrow
+7  A: 

I always liked how www (nine syllables) was a "short form" for World Wide Web (three syllables).

Graeme Perrow
+2  A: 

DILLIGAF - Does It Look Like I Give A Frack?

Andrew Kennan
I got a biker friend that has that tattooed on his arm.
BBetances
+2  A: 

More recursive acronyms:

There was an emacs clone called Eine ("one" in German) which stood for "Eine Is Not Emacs". The next version was called Zwei ("two" in German), which was "Zwei Was Eine, Initially".

Graeme Perrow
There was a CP/M text editor called Mince: Mince Is Not Complete Emacs
Ferruccio
Ar zees crazy Germans wiz zer crazy sense of humour Jah !
Martin Beckett
A: 

ESO = Equipment Superior to Operator

and from the old NeXT days...

YAPP = Yet Another Preview Previewer

noizetoys
A: 

For Star Wars geeks: Novell used to use C3PO: Custom 3rd Party Object.

Graeme Perrow
A: 

EDS - Eternal Downward Spiral

HP - Hardly Processes

IBM - Idiotic Business Models

_ande_turner_
+1  A: 

PICNIC - Problem In Chair, Not In Computer

Support guy 1: "Hey you know that issue I was troubleshooting?"

Support guy 2: "Yeah, seemed like a tough nut"

Support guy 3: "Nope, turned out to be a PICNIC!"

Aidan Ryan
+2  A: 

PITA - Pain in the A$$

Me: The iPhone Audio Services API is such a PITA Someone else: mmmmm pita's....

whoisjake
A: 

JBOD - Just a Bunch Of Disks.

Aptly named!

chazomaticus
I always thought this stood for "Just a Big Ol' Disk" since it represents multiple disks as one disk, but doesn't provide any real RAID features.
muusbolla
+1  A: 

TPS Report.

I'm actually shocked nobody already mentioned this. I guess you guys didn't get the memo huh?

annakata
+1  A: 

Supreme Head of Information Technlogy

Ray Tayek
A: 

RAS Syndrome

Kevin
A: 

Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (aka Perl)

Gross Regular Expression Parser (aka grep)

SqlACID
+1  A: 
BioGeek
SECAM (france) - System Entirely Contrary to American MethodPAL (uk) - Perfection At Last
Martin Beckett
NTSC: Naff Tacky Sick Color.SECAM: Stabbing Eye Color And Migraine
TheBeardyMan
A: 

One from 2001 A Space Odyssey:

HAL: Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic Computer

For those who've not seen the film the computer becomes convinced that the people on the ship he's running need to be eradicated to ensure the success of the mission!

Then someone worked out that if you add one letter to H, A and L you get IBM...

Arthur C Clarke always claimed this was purely coincidental.

nullnvoid
A: 

SNAFU

Evan
+2  A: 

WYSIWYG was burned into my brain forever when I heared it for the first time.

German Wikipedia lists some funny descendants of it, like:

WYSINQWYG - What You See Is Not Quite What You Get
WYGIWYGAINUC - What You Get Is What You're Given And It's No Use Complaining

binOr
+1  A: 

More recursion: XNA's Not Acronymed

Mark Pattison
+2  A: 

This thread is TLDR.

alamodey
you are painfully whack
A: 
  • MEF - Managed Extensibility Framework cause it sounds like meth (Go and read Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) – Very slick, but is it just me? - it's takes the joke too far)
  • LOBS: Line of business system. Current project has a LobsTester class and we refer a lot to lobs (said as the word not the acronym) which is odd for me since my wife calls me that sometimes (dunno what that says about me).
  • strIP: String IP - Years back I was developing a system which counted bandwidth based on IP addresses and stored it in the database and we use hungarian notation for the DB columns so we ended up with Strip. So if you needed to check what people where using you would look up their strip ;)
Robert MacLean
A: 

YAML => YAML Ain't a Markup Language

Xokas11
A: 

Microsoft XNA - XNA's Not an Acronym

That's another recursive one, Pax

Tor Haugen
+1  A: 

WWJD?

JWRTFM!

never gets old.

BBetances
A: 

The help desk guys used to refer to the database of incoming jobs as Fundamental Understanding of Computer Knowledge. Then, when a job was being worked on, it was being F**Ked.

monkeypushbutton
A: 

Another nested acronym:

VHDL = VHSIC hardware description language

where

VHSIC = very high speed integrated circuit

Steve Melnikoff
A: 

CICS = covered in chocolate sauce

It's an IBM mainframe tool but I never met anyone who knew what it really stood for.

Martin Beckett
A: 

I always got a kick out of this one:

SATAN: Security Administrator's Tool for Analyzing Networks

I have the old book sitting on a shelf in my office and everyone gives me a strange look when they see it for the first time.

Chris Kloberdanz
A: 

There's always POTS - Plain Old Telephone System.

johnofcross
A: 

SCSI: System Can't See It.

TheBeardyMan
A: 

All of my software ships with DWIWNWIS which stands for

Do What I Want Not What I Say

For example, a user calls me and asked “Why has the application made all these records up” I answer “Because you used the bulk insert function to make all these records” They say “Ohh well now I remember I did do that, but I did not mean to cant the system tell?”

Hence they want the system to do what they want not what they say

Kevin Ross