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Cruft may also refer to unused and out-of-date computer paraphernalia, collected through upgrading, inheritance, or simple acquisition, both deliberate and through circumstance. This accumulated hardware, however, often has benefit when IT systems administrators, technicians, and the like have need
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later explained that this was meant in the sense of "detritus, that which needs to be swept up and thrown out. The dictionary has no definition for 'crufty,' a word I didn't hear until some years later". Cruft can also refer to alumni who remain socially active at MIT.
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for critical replacement parts. An unused machine or component similar to a production unit could allow near-immediate restoration of the failed unit, as opposed to waiting for a shipped replacement.
61:(MIT). In the 1959 edition of the club's dictionary, it was defined as "that which magically amounds in the Clubroom just before you walk in to clean up. In other words, rubbage". Its author
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that are relevant or meaningful only to the people who created the site, such as implementation details of the computer system which serves the page. Examples of URL cruft could include
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word for anything that is left over, redundant and getting in the way. It is used particularly for defective, superseded, useless, superfluous, or dysfunctional elements in
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and data files are produced. Such cruft, if required for the new executables to work properly, can cause the
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in a computer program that is then uselessly, or even harmfully, compiled into object code.
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Around 1958, the term was used in the sense of "garbage" by students frequenting the
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Jargon word for redundant, obtrusive material, originally used in computing
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The origin of the term is uncertain, but it may be derived from
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This article is about a computing term. For other uses, see
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that accumulates in a folder or directory when software is
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handbook uses the term to refer to leftover or superseded
242:(25th Anniversary ed.). O'Reilly Media. p. 8.
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314:"Bronze Tablet Erected in Cruft Memorial Laboratory"
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