:El Camino Bignum: /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n. The road
mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco
peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City
and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San
Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real,
which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't
really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past
Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.
The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ol'/)
means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to seven
significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger
floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant
digits (other languages have similar `real' types).
When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started
calling it `El Camino Double Precision' --- but when the hacker
was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it
`El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
mundanely called El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco
peninsula that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City
and many portions of which are still intact. Navigation on the San
Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real,
which defines {logical} north and south even though it isn't
really north-south many places. El Camino Real runs right past
Stanford University and so is familiar to hackers.
The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray-ol'/)
means `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN
language, a `real' quantity is a number typically precise to seven
significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger
floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant
digits (other languages have similar `real' types).
When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started
calling it `El Camino Double Precision' --- but when the hacker
was told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it
`El Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See {bignum}.)
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
Related:
- El Camino Bignum /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ n.
The road
mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San Francisco
peninsula.
It originally extended all the way down to Mexico City... - logical adj.
[from the technical term `logical device',
wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary
`logical' name] Having the role of.
If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the `logical' Les Earnest.... - LOGICAL [from the technical term "logical device", wherein a physical
device is referred to by an arbitrary name] adj.
Understood to have a meaning not necessarily corresponding to reality.... - aga n.
[WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N
random broken people.
Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told by Guy L.... - bignum /big'nuhm/ n.
[common; orig. from MIT MacLISP]
1.
[techspeak] A multiple-precision computer representation for very large integers.... - How many
Mexicans
-- does it take to change a light bulb?
As many as will fit in the El Camino. Note: El Camino is a type of Chevrolet (no longer made) that was popular with Latinos.... - alk mode n.
A feature supported by Unix, ITS, and some
other OSes that allows two or more logged-in users to set up a
real-time on-line conversation.
It combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails.... - 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.... - Real Programmer n.
[indirectly, from the book
"Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"] A particular sub-variety of
hacke
one possessed of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience....
