Question of the Day #30

"What do you think of my new computer?"
"Well, there's a lot of cruft in it."

上記の会話で、cruftの意味は？
In the dialogue above, what does "cruft" mean?

答えは、コメントに書いてください。
Write your answer in the Comments.

明日、ここに答えを書きます。
I will add the answer and other remarks here tomorrow.

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解答

OxfordDictionaries.comによると：

• 粗悪な（お粗末な・無駄に複雑な・不要な）コード・プログラム・ソフトウェア
• [形容詞] crufty: 粗悪な（とくに無駄に複雑な）デザイン（のソフト等）

Answer

According to OxfordDictionaries.com:

• Badly designed, unnecessarily complicated, or unwanted code or software.
• [adj.] crufty: Of software: poorly designed, especially unnecessarily or unintentionally complex; containing redundant code.

Etymology/語源

The Free Dictionaryによると、

1950年代のマサチューセッツ工科大学の学生のスラング用語。由来は、ハーバード大学で物理学部が不要の器具を保管したCruft Hall（Cruft Laboratoryの通称）という説がある。

形容詞のcruftyは、OxfordDictionaries.comによると1980年代から使用されていて、最も古い使用例はCoEvolution Quarterly誌。

According to The Free Dictionary:


[Originally 1950s Massachusetts Institute of Technology students' slang, perhaps after Cruft Hall (the informal name for Cruft Laboratory, a building on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the physics department stored unused technical equipment), humorously taken as "hall of cruft" (perhaps influenced by crud and crust).]

According to OxfordDictionaries.com, the adjective crufty originated in the 1980s with the earliest use found in CoEvolution Quarterly.

Examples

• Jim had to spend several days cleaning up the cruft left behind in the code by the newbie programmer.
• "By removing cruft, you can recover valuable disk space and reduce the chance of software conflicts." (Joe Kissell)
• So the more cruft there is in an interface, the more difficult it will be to use.
• This allows you to get very specific with your searches and weed out a lot of the cruft that can get in the way of good results.
• This will help control the cruft on your system as you install and remove source packages.