:WYSIAYG: /wiz'ee-ayg/ adj. Describes a user interface under
which "What You See Is *All* You Get"; an unhappy variant of
{WYSIWYG}. Visual, `point-and-shoot'-style interfaces tend to
have easy initial learning curves, but also to lack depth; they
often frustrate advanced users who would be better served by a
command-style interface. When this happens, the frustrated user
has a WYSIAYG problem. This term is most often used of editors,
word processors, and document formatting programs. WYSIWYG
`desktop publishing' programs, for example, are a clear win for
creating small documents with lots of fonts and graphics in them,
especially things like newsletters and presentation slides. When
typesetting book-length manuscripts, on the other hand, scale
changes the nature of the task; one quickly runs into WYSIAYG
limitations, and the increased power and flexibility of a
command-driven formatter like {{TeX}} or UNIX's {{troff}}
becomes not just desirable but a necessity. Compare {YAFIYGI}.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
brute force adj.
Describes a primitive programming style
one in which the programmer relies on the computer's processing
power instead of using his or her own intelligence to simplify the
problem, often ignoring problems of scale and applying naive
methods suited to small problems directly to large ones....
