[from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small
code segments that the reader can use to do various magic
things in programs. One current example is the
"PostScript Language Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe
Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3), also known as
the Blue Book which has recipes for things like wrapping text
around arbitrary curves and making 3D fonts. Cookbooks, slavishly
followed, can lead one into voodoo programming, but are useful
for hackers trying to monkey up small programs in unknown
languages. This function is analogous to the role of phrasebooks
in human languages.
