tpetricek7 hours ago
There is an entire paper looking at the history, meaning and cultural significance of the foo, bar, baz words: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-019-00387-2
ahazred8ta6 hours ago
Smokey Stover, the 1935 "Where there's foo, there's fire" guy, was a TV cartoon in the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Stover#Animation Influenced by german furchtbar/foobar/fubar, MIT used fu() and bar() in the late '30s.
ksec5 hours ago
A lot of programming languages uses "Foo bar" during introduction without actually explaining why "Foo" and why "bar". Before the age of Google and Internet it was perhaps one of the most common question from speakers of non-English language.
mvkel2 hours ago
This was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome when I was a wee lad combing through "Professional PHP Programming." All of the examples it gave were foo/bar, and I couldn't make the intellectual leap to understand what the real world use cases would be.
It wasn't until I tried building something (mad libs) that things "clicked"
tombert3 hours ago
Being largely self taught, I ended reinventing a lot of lingo myself. My placeholder words are generally “blah”, “yo”, and “fart” unless other people are reading the code.
I never claimed I was terribly mature.
thenoblesunfish5 hours ago
This location in Switzerland reminded me of some placeholder Python code.
junonan hour ago
If you opened a bar there, it'd be the Foo Bar. Full circle.
greatquuxan hour ago
I stole this handle from GLS many many years ago and I use it pretty much everywhere. I guess I just love the idea of metasyntactic variables, and using that phrase whenever anyone asks me about my handle!
_ZeD_7 hours ago
funny how in italian the "Metasyntactic variable"[1] are "pippo", "pluto" and "paperino"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable#Italian
zahlman3 hours ago
> First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples (bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud)
I've seen foo, bar, baz, qu+x, plugh and xyxxy actually in use, not the others.
I've not used "qux" or followed the convention of adding more u's. From me it's been just foo, bar, baz, quux and then some Monty Python inspired ones: spam, ni, ecky, ptong.
Although eventually I learned enough about how to name things that I don't feel the temptation any more. I'll gladly pay that bit of joylessness to understand myself months later.
orsornaan hour ago
I've never seen qu+x, except in the title of that Gundam installment released last year, Gundam gquuuuuux. I found this speculation on myanimelist sufficient, but there's no real confirmation afaik. https://myanimelist.net/forum/?goto=post&topicid=2209708&id=...
jibal5 hours ago
April 1, 2001
IFC_LLC5 hours ago
I don’t understand how this article is not at the top of all times
zabzonk5 hours ago
naming is hard.
my advice to junior programmers after i see them agonising over a name - "just call it x or foo for now, you are going to change it later anyway"
paulddraper3 hours ago
“It might be hard, but don’t let that stop you from making it worse” :)
johnthescott6 hours ago
f*kt up beyond all recognition. semper fidelis
i first heard "foo bar" from eric allman at berkeley office of britton-lee, mid 1980s. i vaguely recall eric wrote a column about history of "foo bar".
alhazrod7 hours ago
Echoes of ARPANET.
mac3n4 hours ago
Now, tell us about "ZQX3".
taybin7 hours ago
No mention of “baz”
hk__22 hours ago
It’s literally in the first sentence of the first definition:
> bar /bar/ n. [JARGON] The second metasyntactic variable, after foo and before baz.
stephenlf6 hours ago
Part 2, 3rd definition of “foo”mentions baz