firefighting
1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational
problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new
newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I
spent the whole afternoon fighting fires."
2. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a
project, especially to get it out before deadline. See also
{gang bang}, {Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term
"firefighting" connotes that the effort is going into chasing
bugs rather than adding features.
(1994-12-01)