craft

n 1: the skilled practice of a practical occupation; "he learned

his trade as an apprentice" [syn: {trade}]

2: a vehicle designed for navigation in or on water or air or

through outer space

3: people who perform a particular kind of skilled work; "he

represented the craft of brewers"; "as they say in the

trade" [syn: {trade}]

4: skill in an occupation or trade [syn: {craftsmanship}, {workmanship}]

5: shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception

[syn: {craftiness}, {cunning}, {foxiness}, {guile}, {slyness},

{wiliness}]

v : make by hand and with much skill

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superseded code.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.