Influence Despite its
tongue-in-cheek approach, multiple other
style guides and similar works have cited ''The New Hacker's Dictionary
as a reference, and even recommended following some of its "hackish" best practices. The Oxford English Dictionary has used the NHD
as a source for computer-related neologisms. The 16th edition (2010, and the current issue ) does likewise. The National Geographic Style Manual
lists NHD
among only 8 specialized dictionaries, out of 22 total sources, on which it is based. That manual is the house style of NGS publications, and has been available online for public browsing since 1995. The NGSM
does not specify what, in particular, it drew from the NHD'' or any other source. Aside from these guides and the
Encyclopedia of New Media, the Jargon file, especially in print form, is frequently cited for both its definitions and its essays, by books and other works on hacker history,
cyberpunk subculture, computer jargon and online style, and the rise of the Internet as a public medium, in works as diverse as the 20th edition of
A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology edited by José Ángel García Landa (2015);
Wired Style: Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age by Constance Hale and Jessie Scanlon of
Wired magazine (1999);
Transhumanism: The History of a Dangerous Idea by David Livingstone (2015); Mark Dery's
Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (1994) and
Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (2007);
Beyond Cyberpunk! A Do-it-yourself Guide to the Future by
Gareth Branwyn and Peter Sugarman (1991); and numerous others.
Time magazine used ''The New Hacker's Dictionary
(Raymond-1993) as the basis for an article about online culture in the November 1995 inaugural edition of the "Time Digital" department. NHD
was cited by name on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Upon the release of the second edition, Newsweek used it as a primary source, and quoted entries in a sidebar, for a major article on the Internet and its history. The MTV show This Week in Rock
used excerpts from the Jargon File in its "CyberStuff" segments. Computing Reviews'' used one of the Jargon File's definitions on its December 1991 cover. On October 23, 2003, ''The New Hacker's Dictionary
was used in a legal case. SCO Group cited the 1996 edition definition of "FUD" (fear, uncertainty and doubt), which dwelt on questionable IBM business practices, in a legal filing in the civil lawsuit SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp. (In response, Raymond added SCO to the entry in a revised copy of the Jargon File'', feeling that SCO's own practices deserved similar criticism.)
Defense of the term hacker The book is particularly noted for helping (or at least trying) to preserve the distinction between a
hacker (a consummate programmer) and a
cracker (a
computer criminal); even though not reviewing the book in detail, both the
London Review of Books and
MIT Technology Review remarked on it in this regard. In a substantial entry on the work, the
Encyclopedia of New Media by Steve Jones (2002) observed that this defense of the term
hacker was a motivating factor for both Steele's and Raymond's print editions:
-P Convention The "-P Convention" or "P Question" refers to the act of making a statement into a question by appending "P." When spoken aloud, the "P" is literally pronounced as a separate syllable "Pee." This usage was immortalized in the Jargon File and from there the use spread to some younger users seeking to be part of the classical
Internet community. This practice originated among users of the
Lisp programming language, in which there is the convention of appending the letter "P" on elements to denote a
predicate (a yes or no question). It is most commonly used at
MIT and the
University of California, Berkeley, or among computer scientists working in
Artificial intelligence (which frequently uses Lisp).
M-expression and
S-expression were other new information representations introduced in a related context. The typical example of use is: Q: "Foodp?" (Do you want food?) A: "T!" (Literally, True: yes) A: "Nil." (Also Null; no, I don't want food).
Reviews and reactions PC Magazine in 1984, stated that ''The Hacker's Dictionary'' was superior to most other computer-humor books, and noted its authenticity to "hard-core programmers' conversations", especially slang from MIT and Stanford. Reviews quoted by the publisher include:
William Safire of
The New York Times referring to the Raymond-1991
NHD as a "sprightly lexicon" and recommending it as a nerdy gift that holiday season (this reappeared in his "On Language" column again in mid-October 1992);
Hugh Kenner in
Byte suggesting that it was so engaging that one's reading of it should be "severely timed if you hope to get any work done"; and
Mondo 2000 describing it as "slippery, elastic fun with language", as well as "not only a useful guidebook to very much un-official technical terms and street tech slang, but also a de facto ethnography of the early years of the hacker culture". Positive reviews were also published in academic as well as computer-industry publications, including
IEEE Spectrum,
New Scientist,
PC Magazine,
PC World,
Science, and (repeatedly)
Wired. US game designer
Steve Jackson, writing for
Boing Boing magazine in its pre-blog, print days, described
NHD essay "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker" as "a wonderfully accurate pseudo-demographic description of the people who make up the hacker culture". He was nevertheless critical of Raymond's tendency to editorialize, even "
flame", and of the Steele cartoons, which Jackson described as "sophomoric, and embarrassingly out of place beside the dry and sophisticated humor of the text". He wound down his review with some rhetorical questions: The third print edition garnered additional coverage, in the usual places like
Wired (August 1996), and even in mainstream venues, including
People magazine (October 21, 1996). ==References==