Booting up: The curious origin stories in the language of computing

Booting up: The curious origin stories in the language of computing

By William Bonaventura, Applied Physics, 2021

The field of computer science is riddled with technical jargon. Just think of common movie scenes in which a coder spews a mouthful of incomprehensible phrases, leaving the other characters completely lost. Although much of the language describing how data is stored and transferred in our society sounds foreign to many, occasionally a word or two will leak out into the public domain due to its simplicity and eccentricity. It’s worth taking a look at the illuminating and often amusing backstories behind a few of these words.

Although much of the language describing how data is stored and transferred in our society sounds foreign to many, occasionally a word or two will leak out into the public domain due to its simplicity and eccentricity.

Labeling a discovered computer issue an insect may not be the first idea that comes to mind. Nevertheless, the term “bug” is largely considered to have gained popularity one fateful night in 1947 at Harvard University. Former Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was working with an electromechanical computer called the Mark II when she discovered an error in the system. The culprit was a moth stuck in one of the relays, an electrical switch. The moth was removed and taped to the team’s log book for preservation — the first named instance of “debugging” a computer. From then on, hunting for “bugs,” or minor problems in software, had cemented its place in the computational lexicon.

Creative naming may be the best way to debug subconscious fears towards coding in general.

Another peculiar, yet ubiquitous, phrase in internet communication is “spam.” Spam refers to bulk, untargeted junk mail that is commonly distributed for commercial purposes. The origin story behind the phrase is one rooted in an altogether different domain from computer science: comedy. Specifically, it stems from a 1970 Monty Python sketch in which the popular canned meat spam was chanted repeatedly, much to the annoyance of the angry shop owner. In turn, the notion of spam became synonymous with flooding a system with large amounts of data. Remarkably, this is not the only Monty Python reference in the programming world. One of the most popular programming languages, Python, was also named after the comedy troupe, according to the official Python documentation; the language’s developer, Guido van Rossum, turned to the BBC series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” for inspiration for the clever name.

These phrases provide a small glimpse into the curious naming of technological concepts. Using familiar terminology may make these ideas more accessible to the general public, helping promote computer science literacy and enthusiasm. Creative naming may be the best way to debug subconscious fears towards coding as a whole.