A kludge ( or kluge ) is a workaround, a quick-and-dirty solution, a clumsy, inelegant, difficult to extend, hard to maintain yet effective and quick solution to a problem, and a rough synonym to the terms " jury rig ", " Jugaad " or " jerry rig ".

The word ' kludge ' is ... derived from the German adjective klug, originally meaning ' smart ' or ' witty '.... ' Kludge ' eventually came to mean ' not so smart '.

The word " kludge " is, according to Burling, derived from the same root as the German " klug " ( Dutch kloog, Swedish Klag, Danish Klog, Gothic Klaugen, Lettish Kladnis and Sanskrit Veklaunn ), originally meaning " smart " or " witty ".

The Jargon File ( a. k. a. The New Hacker's Dictionary ), which is a glossary of internet slang maintained by Eric S. Raymond, differentiates kludge from kluge and cites usage examples predating 1962.

This entry notes kluge, which is now often spelled kludge, " was the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at that time, used exclusively of hardware kluges ".

Other suggested folk etymologies or backronyms for kludge or kluge is from klumsy, lame, ugly, dumb, but good enough, or klutzy, lashup, under, going, engineering.

In modern computing terminology, a kludge ( or often a " hack ") is a solution to a problem, doing a task, or fixing a system that is inefficient, inelegant, or even unfathomable, but which nevertheless ( more or less ) works.

To kludge around something is to avoid a bug or some difficult condition by building a kludge, perhaps relying on properties of the bug itself to assure proper operation.

A kludge is often used to change the behavior of a system after it is finished, without having to make fundamental changes.

Sometimes the kludge is introduced in order to keep backwards compatibility, but often it is simply introduced because the kludge is an easier alternative.

Something might be a kludge if it fails in corner cases, but this is a less common sense as such situations are not expected to come up in typical usage.

More commonly, a kludge is a poorly working heuristic which was expected to work well.

An intimate knowledge of the context ( i. e., problem domain and / or the kludge's execution environment ) is typically required to build a corner case kludge.

This technique of code injection is considered less robust than proper code modification, and is often called a kludge or hack.

After Granholm's 1962 " How to Design a Kludge " article popularized the kluge variant kludge, both were interchangeably used and confused.

Quick-and-dirty is a term used in reference to anything that is an easy way to implement a workaround or " kludge ".

A monkey test can be used to detect an input kludge problem.

Note that a hack might be a kludge, but that ' hack ' could be, at least in computing, ironic praise, for a quick fix solution to a frustrating problem.

Rather than continue to struggle to find out exactly what is causing the bug and how to fix it, the programmer may hack the problem by the simple kludge of writing new code which compensates.

3. v. To use a kludge to get around a problem.

A variation on this use of kludge is evasion of an unknown problem or bug in a computer program.

Unfortunately, this mathematical modification introduces new issues of its own, namely that the exact nature of the original problem has been destroyed, and visible artifacts of this kludge will continue to haunt the algorithm.

Eric S. Raymond has called it an " important hackerism " alongside kludge and cruft.

The present word has alternate spellings ( kludge and kluge ) and pronunciations ( and, rhyming with fudge and stooge respectively ), and several proposed etymologies.

The Oxford English Dictionary ( 2nd ed., 1989 ) kludge entry cites one source for this word's earliest recorded usage, definition, and etymology: Jackson W. Granholm's 1962 " How to Design a Kludge " article, which appeared in the American computer magazine Datamation.

kludge () Also kluge.

According to Burling, the word " kludge " first appeared in the English language in the early fifteen-hundreds.

Today " kludge " forms one of the most beloved words in design terminology, and it stands ready for handy application to the work of anyone who gins up 110-volt circuitry to plug into the 220 VAC source.

This Jargon File entry notes kludge apparently derives via British military slang from Scots kludge or kludgie meaning " a common toilet ", and became confused with U. S. kluge during or after World War II.

Many younger U. S. hackers pronounce the word as / klooj / but spell it, incorrectly for its meaning and pronunciation, as ' kludge '.

For one thing, this is not a subject often discussed or analyzed.

But more important, and the thing which the casual traveler and the blind sojourner often do not see, is that these places and activities are often the settings in which Persians exercise their extraordinary aesthetic sensibilities.

Yet within this limitation there is an astonishing variety: design as intricate as that in the carpet or miniature, with the melodic line like the painted or woven line often flowing into an arabesque.

Yet often fear persists because, even with the most rigid ritual, one is never quite free from the uneasy feeling that one might make some mistake or that in every previous execution one had been unaware of the really decisive act.

`` Most often '', she says, `` it's the monogamous relationship that is dishonest ''.

If many of the characters in contemporary novels appear to be the bloodless relations of characters in a case history it is because the novelist is often forgetful today that those things that we call character manifest themselves in surface behavior, that the ego is still the executive agency of personality, and that all we know of personality must be discerned through the ego.

It is often stated that Copernican astronomy is ' simpler ' than Ptolemaic.

1543 A.D. is often venerated as the birthday of the scientific revolution.

But when these expectations are once too often ground into the dust, innocence can falter, since its strength is according to the strength of him who possesses it.

Next I refer to our program in space exploration, which is often mistakenly supposed to be an integral part of defense research and development.

The relatively long and often colorful selections in this anthology enable the reader to become genuinely absorbed in what is said, whether he responds with anger or applause.

The continuities, contrasts, and similarities discernible when past and present are surveyed together are inexhaustible and the one is often understood through the other.

It is true that this distinction between style and idea often approaches the arbitrary since in the end we must admit that style and content frequently influence or interpenetrate one another and sometimes appear as expressions of the same insight.

The volume is a piece of passionate special pleading, written with the heat -- and often with the wisdom, it must be said -- of a Liberal damning the shortsightedness of politicians from 1782 to 1832.

That he read some of the books assigned to him with a studied carefulness is evident from his notes, which are often so full that they provide an unquestionable basis for the identification of reviews that were printed without his signature.

The religious quest is often intense and deep, and there are students on every campus who are seriously wrestling with the most profound questions of meaning and value.

His neighbors celebrated his return, even if it was only temporary, and Morgan was especially gratified by the quaint expression of an elderly friend, Isaac Lane, who told him, `` A man that has so often left all that is dear to him, as thou hast, to serve thy country, must create a sympathetic feeling in every patriotic heart ''.

Without a precise knowledge of Germanic philology, however, it is debatable whether their use was not more often a source of confusion and error than anything else.

Youth may be, and often is, skeptical, cynical or despairing ; ;

Although Patchen has given previous evidence of an interest in jazz, the musical group that he works with, the Chamber Jazz Sextet, is often ignored by jazz critics.

He is forced to play for little money, and must often take another job to live.