Notes on  CRUFT 

[very common; back-formation from CRUFTY]

1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed
is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with
a broom only produces more.

2. n. The results of shoddy construction.

3. vt. [from hand cruft, pun on `hand craft'] To write assembler code
for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see
HAND-HACKING).

4. n. Excess; superfluous junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded
code.

5. [University of Wisconsin] n. Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to
geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers".

J3N Research Labs

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