Talk:Cargo cult programming

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Contents 1 Link to html full-text? 2 Copyvio or not? 3 Merged from Cargo cult 4 Reference to World War II

[edit] Link to html full-text?

I'm linking to a PDF version of Feynman's address, which is also linked from Cargo_cult_science

This lead me to a couple of questions:

• Should we link to an html version? Here are two html versions. Each differs from the PDF version, and from each other which appears more authorative (source: Caltech library, appears scanned from Engineering Science 1974). However, Feynman's book may have published an edited version as well
  • Cargo Cult Science (html) as linked from Cargo_cult_science
  • Alternate source for Cargo Cult Science (html) by Richard P. Feynman.
• What is the proper relationship of this article to Cargo_cult_science ? It seems inappropriate to duplicate full-text references here, but worse to not include them.

Jodi.a.schneider 22:20, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio or not?

The page contained the following text:

== Alert, possible copyright violation ==

see http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/cargo-cult-programming.html

I really can't tell right away what the licensing is on the other site.

I removed it, since clicking a few times 'up' brings one to http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html which says:

"This document (the Jargon File) is in the public domain, to be freely used, shared, and modified. There are (by intention) no legal restraints on what you can do with it, but there are traditions about its proper use to which many hackers are quite strongly attached. Please extend the courtesy of proper citation when you quote the File, ideally with a version number, as it will change and grow over time."

Seems quite clear to me. --Andre Engels

More specifically - http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/quoting.html. --Khendon

[edit] Merged from Cargo cult

The following was added to cargo cult and then deleted by User:Wesley - someone might want to merge/replace this article with this text:

"A related term is cargo cult programming, which involves an unskilled or novice computer programmer copying some program code from one place and pasting it into another place, with little or no understanding of how the code works or how to properly adapt it to its new desired function. It is as if the code just fell out of the sky and is expected to do wonderful things, but without any understanding of how to make it work well. With the increasing popularity of the internet, this has become especially popular with JavaScript scripts and CGI scripts."

[edit] Reference to World War II

According to the Wikipedia entry for "Cargo Cult", the aboriginal practice began in the late 19th century. TPOBrien 01:04, 31 December 2006 (UTC)