Parm?  What's the f#çk is a parm?!?

I'm on contract working on a useless, badly crafted web application at a major financial firm.  Stupidity is rampant here, which is to be expected in such an environment.  However, this takes the cake.

The other programmers here refer to a parameter (i.e. a value passed into a function) as a 'parm'.  As in veal parmesan.  I almost fell out of my chair when two programmers were talking about passing this parm and what the value is of that other parm.

So, I did a quick search, and lo and behold, this is a widespread slang that I've somehow lucked out of being exposed to in my 8 years doing software development in all sorts of environments. http://www.google.com/search?&q=parameter+parm

This is clearly a scourge of society.  If people want an abbreviation of parameter, they should use 'param'.  For the good of the children, please don't mangle the name of a fine type of cheese without cause.

Wait....don't tell me that some of you say this too?!?  Oh no.... ;-)

must...keep...head....from.....exploding....
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Dude, my Apple II Applesoft Basic manual talks about Parms.

Flamebait Sr.
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Would you like some parm to go on that bitter soup? BTW: Fresh parm barely smells at all, unlike the puke-smelling vile stuff you can buy in a shaker.

If there was a term that drove me nuts, it's "GWID" - as in "The COM object has a unique gwid". (i.e. for GUID, which I've always called "goo-id")

.
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Sorry about your head...

And yes - I am guilty of using "parms" - I guess I am lazy - parameters has too many syllables :-)

I realized the error of my ways and have slowly been changing and now try to refer to them as params

Please forgive my sins...
Thursday, April 1, 2004

I just call them p's. The average conversation goes something like:

"Hey wut r thu ts of the p's to your f?"

.
Thursday, April 1, 2004

How about:

par'm

?

Pat Galea
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Did anyone ever start working at a new place, and said "wow, this codebase looks great!"

Seriously... If parms are their worst offence, it must be a great place to work.

Big B
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Would you like some parm with your salad cream?

Ryan Seacrest
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Believe me, this place is a pit.  Most of the problems are interpersonal -- vile, bigoted conversation fills every day, especially if I forget to bring my headphones.  I'll hopefully start a different contract elsewhere by the end of the month...until then, I'll have to deal with being here.  Perhaps this is just my way of making light of a situation that is having a significantly negative impact on my overall outlook on life.

must...keep...head....from.....exploding....
Thursday, April 1, 2004

How did managers ever get the idea that programmers are a lot of egotistical whining crybabies?

...
Thursday, April 1, 2004

parms are to params as
libary is to library

-a product of thier hick/redneck environment

apw
Thursday, April 1, 2004

While I won't use 'parm' now - I'm chicken.  :)

sgf
Thursday, April 1, 2004

params are to parameters as..

.
Thursday, April 1, 2004

I've never started at a place and said "wow, this codebase looks great", but I have left too many places saying "I feel sorry for the poor wretch who gets stuck trying to decipher that morass of crapulent hacks."

Ugnonimous
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Why is it bad to say parm and not bad to use "don't" and "I'll"?

NathanJ
Thursday, April 1, 2004

My pet peeve is pronouncing "URL" like "Earl".  Is it really so hard to say "You Are El"?

Michael Eisenberg
Thursday, April 1, 2004

My pet peeve is "You Are El"...is it so hard to pronounce it "Uniform Resource Locator"?

.
Thursday, April 1, 2004

My pet peeve is when another individual situated near me  emits a noxious odor from their posterior and neglects to say, "Excuse me". I mean, is the phrase "Excuse me" really that hard to pronounce?

Noah Buddy
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Parms is old school. I think you are probably just
mad about the other stuff.

son of parnas
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Arg... I've been living in the sticks in NC for way too long as it is, after reading through this thread I'm hungry enough to kill a man for a good sausage parm from Marcello's back in Berkeley Hgts.

Sigh.

BTW - Will work for opportunity to live near good Italian food.

Greg Hurlman
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Parm is mainframe jargon.  JCL and the like.

You'll get that kind of crazy talk at financial organisations.

Koz
Thursday, April 1, 2004

http://www.faqs.org/docs/jargon/P/parm.html

"parm: /parm/, n.
Further-compressed form of param. This term is an IBMism, and written use is almost unknown outside IBM shops; spoken /parm/ is more widely distributed, but the synonym arg is favored among hackers. Compare arg, var."

Egor
Thursday, April 1, 2004

While we're on it...

How do you pronounce WM_PAINT?

Alex.ro
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Wasn't there a discussion on here last year wondering how to pronounce "LOL"?

Philo

Philo
Thursday, April 1, 2004

WM_PAINT = wimp ain't

Capybara
Thursday, April 1, 2004

Neat.

Alex.ro
Thursday, April 1, 2004

I don't care what IBM does—that's damn stupid, just like EBCDIC.

Just say "parameter," for God's sake. What is it with programmers and abbreviations? Seriously, are many of them just lazy in a bad way, or do they really think they're doing others a favor? And if you must abbreviate, why on earth would you choose "parm" over "param"?

The argmt agnts abbrvtons
Friday, April 2, 2004

Abbreviations happen alot to programmers because of string-length limits in various places.  8.3 filenames for example.

"parm" is used for the same reason that the unix password command is "passwd", copy is "cp", and list is "ls".

Richard P
Friday, April 2, 2004

...except that Unix never had any technical limits that required copy and list to be abbreviated. Unix geeks just love this nonsense because it makes their commands look arcane and inscrutable.

Chris Nahr
Saturday, April 3, 2004

It's simply a question of shorthand. Same reason u get txt.

Stephen Jones
Saturday, April 3, 2004

Palindrome:  E*Parm-Rape

Bella
Saturday, April 3, 2004

>> My pet peeve is when another individual situated near me  emits a noxious odor from their posterior and neglects to say, "Excuse me". I mean, is the phrase "Excuse me" really that hard to pronounce?

I always find it slightly bizarre that somebody farts and then says "ooh, excuse me", like it was as big a surprise to them as it was to you.... which it probably wasn't!

If you're gonna fart in the presence of others at least do it properly and make sure you sidle up nice and close to them first.

Regular readers won't be surprised to learn that I get a great deal of amusement out of flatulence. I even remember being in a crowded classroom on a VB course and discretely dropping the most vile air biscuit. The thought of it drifting round the room and everyone suffering and wondering who it was but not wanting to say anything was almost more than I could take. I sat only just managing to hold in the most enormous laughing fit for at least 20 minutes. Oh boy was that sweet. Trouser terrorism!

gwyn
Sunday, April 4, 2004

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