Related:

• death code n. A routine whose job is to set everything in the computer -- registers, memory, flags, everything -- to zero, including that portion of memory where it is running
  its last act is to stomp on its own "store zero" instruction....
• hot spot: n. 1. [primarily used by C/UNIX programmers, but spreading] It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time
  if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise....
• orthogonal: [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independe
  well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent....
• one-liner wars: n. A game popular among hackers who code in the language APL (see {write-only language} and {line noise}).
  The objective is to see who can code the most interesting and/or useful routine in one line of operators chosen from APL's exceedingly {hairy} primitive set....
• hot spot n. 1. [primarily used by C/Unix programmers, but spreading] It is received wisdom that in most programs, less than 10% of the code eats 90% of the execution time
  if one were to graph instruction visits versus code addresses, one would typically see a few huge spikes amidst a lot of low-level noise....
• bit bucket n. [very common] 1. The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction).
  Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'....
• orthogonal adj. [from mathematics] Mutually independe
  well separated; sometimes, irrelevant to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping or mutually independent....
• BLT: /B-L-T/, /bl*t/ or (rarely) /belt/ n.,vt. Synonym for {blit}.
  This is the original form of {blit} and the ancestor of {bitblt}....
• breath-of-life packet: [XEROX PARC] n. An Ethernet packet that contains bootstrap (see {boot}) code
  periodically sent out from a working computer to infuse the `breath of life' into any computer on the network that has happened to crash....