Screenshot from The Simpsons “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.”
The Simpsons, S07E16, “Lisa the Iconoclast.” Image © Fox Broadcasting / The Simpsons.


Over the years, I’ve collected some words, terms, and concepts that I think are “perfectly cromulent” (to paraphrase the Simpsons). These come from fields such as philosophy, computer science, and linguistics—terms that subtly shape my thinking and even make me a better admin. Here’s a sort of lexicon of Adminjitsu.

Some Computer Science Terms

  • Idempotent
    An operation you can repeat over and over and always get the same result.
    Example: Pressing an elevator’s “3” button multiple times still just takes you to floor 3 once. In HTTP, GET and DELETE are idempotent, but POST usually isn’t.

  • Monad
    A term in philosophy, functional programming, chemistry, and biology.
    In programming (especially Haskell), a monad is a design pattern for handling side effects. In philosophy, it means a basic, indivisible unit—like Leibniz’s “building block of reality.”
    I still love the name “Maybe Monad” although it was the headache-inducing end to my foray into functional programming.

  • Shebang
    The #! at the top of Unix scripts.
    Signals to the OS which interpreter should run the script (e.g., #!/bin/bash). The Linux kernel handles this in fs/binfmt_script.c.

  • ACID
    (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability)—the four properties of reliable database transactions.
    Most good database should be ACID-compliant (there are exceptions like NoSQL).

  • Caveman Debugging The primitive but effective art of littering your code with print or echo statements.

  • Bogosort The infamous “randomly shuffle until sorted” algortihm—funny, real, and often cited as the worst possible sort. Caveman debugging might work, but caveman sorting definitely doesn’t.

    For comparison, see the Quick Sort algorithm in Hungarian folk dance form.

  • LIFO/FIFO
    “Last In, First Out” / “First In, First Out.”
    Fundamental terms in data structures (stacks and queues). Also how sysadmins deal with tickets (ideally FIFO, but sometimes…)

  • Immutability The property that data cannot be changed after it is created. Instead of modifying existing values, programs produce new ones. This helps make code safer and more predictable—no “spooky action at a distance” from hidden changes. In Python, tuple and strings are immutable. In functional languages, all data is usually immutable.

  • Heuristic A practical method or “rule of thumb” used to solve problems or make decisions quickly when perfect solutions are too costly or impossible. Heuristics don’t guarantee the best answer, but they’re often good enough.

  • Cargo Cult Programming Using code, patterns, or processes without understanding them, hoping they magically work. For a fascinating read, check out Cargo Cults on Wikipedia.

  • Munging To modify data, often destructively. This often involves gnarly regex patterns.

A Little Philosophy is a Fine Thing

  • Solipsism
    The philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. Everything outside your mind might be an illusion.
    Geek twist: Useful shorthand when describing “works on my machine” syndrome.

  • Tautology
    A statement that is always true by virtue of its logical form, e.g., “It will rain, or it won’t.”
    In programming, sometimes refers to redundant conditions (e.g., if (x == x)). Also an all-time favorite logic joke.

  • Epistemology
    The study of knowledge: how do we know what we know?
    Useful for late-night code review debates about “best practices.”

  • Axiom
    A statement or proposition regarded as self-evidently true, forming the basis of a logical system or theory.
    In mathematics and logic, axioms are the bedrock; everything else is built by deduction. Example: “Through any two points, there is exactly one straight line.”

  • Sieve
    A process or algorithm for filtering elements by successively removing items that do not meet certain criteria.
    Famous in math as the Sieve of Eratosthenes, a classic way to find all primes up to a given number. Also used in spam filtering, data cleaning, and sorting tasks.

  • A priori
    Knowledge or reasoning that is independent of experience—something knowable before observing the world.
    Opposite of “a posteriori,” which is based on experience. Example: “All bachelors are unmarried” is an a priori truth. In tech, an a priori assumption might be: ‘The network will always be available.’ (Famous last words…)

  • Etymology The study of the origin of words and how their meanings and forms change over time. If you’ve ever spent an hour down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about where “debug” or “daemon” came from, congrats—you’re into etymology.

Naming Convention Terms

  • CamelCase
    Capitalizing each word and running them together, like CamelCase or UpperCrust.

  • lowerCamelCase (aka “lowercapCamelCase”, my preferred term!)
    Like thisIsAnExample—first letter is lowercase, rest are capitalized.
    Examples: Hugo’s --cleanDestinationDir, JavaScript variables like myVarName.

  • bIZARRO cAMEL cASE For smart-alecks and iconoclasts

  • snake_case
    Words joined with underscores, like this_is_snake_case.
    Common in Python variables, C constants: MAX_BUFFER_SIZE.

  • kebab-case
    Words separated by hyphens, like kebab-case.
    Used in URLs, filenames, and CSS class names.

  • Hungarian notation
    Prefix variable names with type hints, e.g., pszName for “pointer to zero-terminated string.”
    Example: dwCount (DWORD count), strUser (string), bEnabled (boolean).
    Not recommended these days, but once a Microsoft standard.

  • Reverse Hungarian notation
    Type information goes after the base name, e.g., nameStr or countInt.
    Used by Microsoft and in Visual Basic.

  • StudlyCaps
    Randomly mixing upper and lowercase: sTuDlYcApS.
    Almost always used ironically.

  • Reverse DNS notation
    Used by Apple and Java to avoid naming conflicts, like com.apple.OpenDirectory or org.apache.commons.io.
    Your domain backwards, then your product, then the class or extension.

  • DotCase
    Using periods: dot.case.example.
    Used in JSON keys, configuration files.

  • COBOL-CASE
    ALL-UPPERCASE-WITH-HYPHENS.
    A throwback to the COBOL programming language!

Super Meta

  • Metasyntactic variables
    foo, bar, baz, and the cast of cryptography (Alice, Bob, Eve, Mallory…).
    If you see Alice sending a message to Bob, you’re probably reading crypto docs.

  • Quine

    A program that outputs its own source code.

    Python example:

    source = "source = {!r}\nprint(source.format(source))"
print(source.format(source))

    Bash example:

    s='s=%q; printf "$s" "$s"'; printf "$s" "$s"

    Give em’ a try!

  • Recursion
    When a function calls itself as part of its execution.
    Classic joke: “See recursion.” (Or, “To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.”)

    Here’s a fun example in bash that outputs 5 4 3 2 1 Blastoff!

      function count_down() {
  if [ "$1" -le 0 ]; then
    echo "Blastoff!"
  else
    echo "$1"
    count_down $(( $1 - 1 ))
  fi
}

count_down 5

  • Steganography

    The art of hiding data, usually a file inside of another file. Here’s an ancient, simple example that is trivially easy to detect but fascinating nonetheless.

    • On Linux: cat ninja.jpg secret.txt > stego.jpg
    • On Windows: copy /b ninja.jpg + secret.txt stego.jpg

    You can easily see the txt data with a hex editor or the strings command.

A ninja with a secret A ninja with a secret

  • Self-Modifying Bash Script: a Run Counter

    Sometimes bash just writes itself. In this simple example we update the # RUN_COUNT comment each run and report on the value.

      #!/bin/bash

# RUN_COUNT: 0

count=$(grep '^# RUN_COUNT:' "$0" | awk '{print $3}')
new_count=$((count + 1))
echo "You've run this script $new_count times!"

# Update the count in the script
sed -i "s/^# RUN_COUNT: .*/# RUN_COUNT: $new_count/" "$0"

    Note: on macOS and BSD, you will need to use this sed syntax:

    sed -i '' "s/^# RUN_COUNT: .*/# RUN_COUNT: $new_count/" "$0"

    Self-modifying or polymorphic code is rare in the real world, but seeing a bash script mutate itself is a mind-bender. It’s a great way to demonstrate code as data—and vice versa! This is generally considered a bad practice since the script may very well eat itself and git will always see it as dirty—and it is.

Goofy but Useful Concepts

  • TEOTWAWKI
    Acronym for “The End Of The World As We Know It.”
    Popularized in survivalist, sci-fi, and prepper circles, as well as internet memes. Handy for describing major changes in tech, software, or society (“Is this a TEOTWAWKI moment?”)

  • NIMBY
    “Not In My Back Yard.” Resistance to change that affects one’s own domain, while accepting it elsewhere.

  • Nattering Nabobs of Negativity William Safire’s phrase for relentless pessimists and critics—every tech team has one. From a speech during the lead-up to the 1970 midterm elections. The speech was part of his campaign rhetoric criticizing the media for their coverage of the Nixon administration.

  • Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

    To condense the bizarre but logically accurate news briefing by then U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld:

    “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.”

  • Ersatz
    An imitation or substitute, usually inferior.
    “Ersatz coffee” (WWII); in tech, can refer to quick hacks or shims that just barely work.

  • TIMTOWTDI “There Is More Than One Way To Do It”—Perl’s unofficial motto.

Other Fun Words

  • Shibboleth
    A custom, often obscure way of saying or doing something that signals you are part of the tribe.
    Origin: Judges 12:5–6 — the Gileadites identified Ephraimite fugitives by their inability to pronounce “shibboleth.” This is the age old challenge of talking the talk and walking the walk.

  • Ineffable Too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words. Beyond language. Beyond form.

  • Churlish Rude, surly, or lacking politeness and good manners. It’s often used to describe someone who is grumpy, ungracious, or unnecessarily difficult.

  • Arabesque Generally refers to something intricate, ornamental, or flowing. It can refer to floral motifs and geometric shapes in Islamic and Byzantine ornamentation. In Ballet and music, in Literature and Speech. It has the sense of something that is usually elegant, intricate and beautifully complex.

  • Hinky Suspicious, strange or something isn’t quite right. Has origins as law enforcement Slang. “Something about this guy seems hinky” meant there was something suspicious or out of the ordinary.

  • Hechicero, Hechicera Spanish for sorcerer, wizard or magician. from the verb hechizar meaning to bewitch or enchant. “Un verdadero hechicero” a true sorcerer.

  • Isogloss In linguistics, a geographical boundary marking where certain linguistic features occur. This will be relatable if you have ever worked in a large, older company where teams are fiercely devoted to wildly different languages, tools, or design patterns. In this case the isogloss may very well be the elevator or break room

  • Ikigai Japanese for purpose-driven living, which breaks down into:

    • what you love
    • What you’re good at
    • What the world needs
    • What you can be paid for

  • Shoshin (初心) The Zen concept of approaching learning with an open, beginner’s mind.

    Conclusion

Have a cromulent word of your own? Email me: feedback@adminjitsu.com