cargo cult programming

Intermediate đź’» Tech / IT

Definition

Writing code by copying patterns and practices without understanding why they work, like a ritual performed for magical results. The programming equivalent of adding 'import numpy as np' to every Python script because you saw it once.

Example Usage

He's doing cargo cult programming again—there's a try-catch block around every single line and he can't explain why.

Origin

Named after WWII-era Pacific island cargo cults, term applied to programming by Eric S. Raymond in the 1990s

Fun Fact

Stack Overflow has inadvertently become the world's largest cargo cult temple, with millions of developers copying code they don't fully understand—but hey, it compiles.

Source: Software engineering anti-patterns and code review literature

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