What are some of your favorite acronyms that people don't always know?

• SCUBA
• SIDA
• APB

What are your favorites? And do you wanna guess mine?

-- Emily (me@emilyweise.com), September 25, 2000

Answers

People talk about a snafu which really was SNAFU... and it has a cousin, FUBAR. These terms come out of WWII GI-speak but worked their way into civilian language and seem to be especially apt for use in the high tech computer culture. Hey, here's a computer term especially popular with tech support folks: RTFM! Of course, being involved with software, half of my conversations seem to be composed of acronyms and jargon. The first programming language I learned was PL/I... then I learned APL... and a very little bit of FORTRAN... and then COBOL (which put food on my table for many years)... but I didn't just do COBOL, I did CICS COBOL. Now I spend hours discussing the use of CMP EJBs and BMP EJBs (and oh yes, of course, HTML and XML and HTTP and TCP/IP and JSP and RMI and IIOP and CORBA and JDBC and....) Jim


-- Jim (jimsjournal@yahoo.com), October 04, 2000.

Well, I know SCUBA, Self Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus. Know who invented it? I also work in the computer field and have started running into acronyms that where each letter is an acronym. ARGH! But a new twist on the game is that when people use an acronym to me I always stop them and ask them what it means...if they don't know, then they aren't allowed to use it anymore...its amazing how many people spew out acronyms but have no idea what they mean! Anyone heard of the programming language JOVIAL? Which is of course an acronym. First language I used after college. It is almost a dead language...but not quite...

-- John (jbuyer@hotmail.com), October 17, 2000.