Street Handstyles & Hacker Jargon Constructions
Two counter-cultures, one naming philosophy.
In graffiti culture, the tag is a writer's unique signature. Early NYC writers like TAKI 183 combined a nickname with their street number, while Philadelphia's Cornbread set conventions in the late 1960s. Tags are chosen for letter flow, speed, and sound. Suffixes like -one, -rock, and street numbers give rhythm. Crowns, halos, and arrows signal status.
From the New Hacker's Dictionary: hackers at MIT, Stanford, and Bell Labs developed structural jargon rules cataloged in The Jargon File. Verb Doubling — using "hack,hack" as a comment. The -P Convention from LISP predicates (food-p?). Overgeneralization of suffixes (-itude, -osity, -xen). Soundalike Slang as puns. Both cultures found power in naming — on walls or in terminals.
The Jargon File documents a quality spectrum hackers use to rate code. From worst to best:
Reliability scale: broken → flaky → dodgy → fragile → brittle → solid → robust → bulletproof → armor-plated