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From: roberts@cognos.uucp (Robert Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards,news.misc
Subject: Re: History: foo and fubar are unrelated
Message-ID: <1539@cognos.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Oct-87 16:15:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: cognos.1539
Posted: Wed Oct  7 16:15:20 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Oct-87 15:01:25 EDT
References: <1266@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK> <1632@chinet.UUCP>
Reply-To: roberts@cognos.UUCP (Robert Stanley)
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 51
Xref: dciem comp.misc:1192 comp.unix.questions:3833 comp.unix.wizards:4158 news.misc:835
Summary: Blame LISP

In article <1632@chinet.UUCP> editor@chinet.UUCP (Alex Zell) writes:

>So what has all this to do with "foo?"
>Nothing.  The two expressions were totally unrelated in their origins.
>The use of "foo" in computerology was initiated simultaneously by many
>hundreds of computerists.
  
>When we first received our IMSAI-8080 without disk drives, and with a 
>defective copy of ALOS-8, we entered  programs by front panel paddles.
>One would read the list while another did the entries.  
>Whenever I came to an entry such as "B000" or "F000" I would pronounce
>"boo" or "foo"  and would be corrected by son Pete: "No, you should
>always spell it out "ef-zero-zero-zero" or we may end up with errors."
>(You have no idea how rigid very young teenagers can be.  "What's right
>is right.")

This is the first posting to have appeared in this topic which has tackled
the problem of WHY these words became ubiquitous.  I think the tale of using
panel switches points at least in part to the reason, but there is more.

Levy's book "Hackers" is probably the best reference for the early days of
computing, particularly at the MIT AI Lab, and it revealed the underlying
roots of many mysteries.  It also pointed up the salient characteristics of
those same hackers, from whose work has sprung so much of today's computing
mythology.

LISP is one of those languages which absolutely requires the programmer to
keep handy a number of re-usable symbolic references.  The only properties
of these references are that they must be memorable, interchangeable but not
likely to be confused in the heat of the moment and, above all else, easy to
type.  The choice of particular monosyllables is probably attributable to the
keyboard habits of the local guru.  My own choice has, for many years, been
'fred', which is a cycle of four keys under my frequently idle left index
finger.  To the best of my knowledge, 'fred' has never been an acronym for
anything in my computing career, nor do I use 'fred' as a generic personal
reference, it is simply a conveniently mnemonic symbolic reference.

Within any community, certain traits/habits are likely to be reduced to
standard ritual which, after a certain elapsed time become just the way
things are.  So, it would seem, with 'foo', 'bar', 'baz' etc.  It is
interesting to note that the ritual UNIX name 'junk' also lies moderately
easily under a single finger of the right hand on the keyboard....

If anyone wants an interesting psychology project, perhaps they can poll
active programmers for their preferred private symbolic references....

-- 
Robert Stanley           Cognos Incorporated     S-mail: P.O. Box 9707
Voice: (613) 738-1440 (Research: there are 2!)           3755 Riverside Drive 
  FAX: (613) 738-0002    Compuserve: 76174,3024          Ottawa, Ontario 
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