cruft
/kruhft/ [back-formation from {crufty}] 1. An unpleasant
substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft; the
TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a broom
only produces more.
2. The results of shoddy construction.
3. ["hand cruft", pun on "hand craft"] To write assembler code
for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see
{hand-hacking}).
4. Excess; superfluous junk; used especially of redundant or
superseded code.
This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is
sure of its etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a
Cruft Hall at Harvard University which is part of the old
physics building. It is said to have been the physics
department's radar lab during WWII. To this day (early 1993)
the windows appear to be full of random techno-junk. {MIT} or
Lincoln Labs people may well have coined the term as a knock
on the competition.