Phil Bronstein today asked the unmusical question “What Tech Buzzwords Make You Go, “Huh?”. He brings up terms like “interstitial” (like, look it up buddy, it’s in the dictionary) and “open source” (if you don’t know this one by now, you’re doomed).
But what if the technical term is, to put it delicately, eff’d up?
A story from the legendary editor of the late great Dr. Dobbs Journal, Jon Erickson, told to yours truly to illustrate: One of the cover stories was on Thompson AWK language and as editor he set the enthusiastic tone (yes, some folks get really excited at the thought of AWK) with “TAWKing with C++”. However, somebody wasn’t minding their p’s and q’s (when they actually did mind p’s and q’s). When the magazine cover came back for final review it said something slightly different – “Twaking with C++”.
I don’t know if meth-heads read DDJ, but Jon wasn’t too pleased. Reportedly everyone could hear it thrown across the room and wham into the door. Oops.
Later, as a joke, the staff put together a fake cover with another “twak” reference. This is why journalists are heavy drinkers and why editors have short tempers.