Kludge
This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, animation and government.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1989), cites Jackson W. Granholm's 1962 "How to Design a Kludge" article[1] in the American computer magazine Datamation.
...OED defines these two kludge cognates as: bodge 'to patch or mend clumsily' and fudge 'to fit together or adjust in a clumsy, makeshift, or dishonest manner'.
Granholm humorously imagined a fictitious source for the term:[1] Phineas Burling is the chief calligrapher with the Fink and Wiggles Publishing Company, Inc. ...
The word "kludge" is, according to Burling, derived from the same root as the German klug (Dutch kloog, Swedish klag, Danish klog, Gothic klaugen, Lettish [Latvian] kladnis and Sanskrit veklaunn), originally meaning 'smart' or 'witty'.
The New Hacker's Dictionary), a glossary of computer programmer slang maintained by Eric S. Raymond, differentiates kludge from kluge and cites usage examples pre-dating 1962.
[6] Kluge "was common Navy slang in the World War II era for any piece of electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at sea".
[6] A summary of a 1947 article in the New York Folklore Quarterly states:[8][9] On being drafted into the navy, Murgatroyd gave his profession as "kluge maker" ....
[11] In modern computing terminology, a "kludge" (or often a "hack") is a solution to a problem, the performance of a task, or a system fix which is inefficient, inelegant ("hacky"), or even incomprehensible, but which somehow works.
For example, if a variable keeps ending up doubled, a kludge may be to add later code that divides by two rather than to search for the original incorrect computation.
The neuroscientist David Linden discusses how intelligent design proponents have misconstrued brain anatomy:[14] The transcendent aspects of our human experience, the things that touch our emotional and cognitive core, were not given to us by a Great Engineer.
The things we hold highest in our human experience (love, memory, dreams, and a predisposition for religious thought) result from a particular agglomeration of ad hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolution history.
Marcus described a biological kluge:[15] For instance, the vertebrate eye's retina that is installed backward, facing the back of the head rather than the front.
As a result, all kinds of stuff gets in its way, including a bunch of wiring that passes through the eye and leaves us with a pair of blind spots, one in each eye.In John Varley's 1985 short story "Press Enter_", the antagonist, a reclusive hacker, adopts the identity Charles Kluge.
In a 2012 article, political scientist Steven Teles used the term "kludgeocracy" to criticize the complexity of social welfare policy in the United States.
Teles argues that institutional and political obstacles to passing legislation often drive policy makers to accept expedient fixes rather than carefully thought out reforms.
