Many mental processes admit of being roughly measured. For instance, the
degree to which people are bored, by counting the number of their fidgets.
I not infrequently tried this method at the meetings of the Royal
Geographical Society, for even there dull memoirs are occasionally read.
[...] The use of a watch attracts attention, so I reckon time by the number
of my breathings, of which there are 15 in a minute. They are not counted
mentally, but are punctuated by pressing with 15 fingers successively. The
counting is reserved for the fidgets. These observations should be confined
to persons of middle age. Children are rarely still, while elderly
philosophers will sometimes remain rigid for minutes altogether.
-- Francis Galton (1909)
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....
COME FROM n.
A semi-mythical language construct dual to the
`go to' COME FROM <label> would cause the referenced label
to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached
it control would quietly and automagically be transferred to
the statement following the COME FROM....
