gang bang
The use of large numbers of loosely coupled programmers in an attempt to wedge a
great many features into a product in a short time. Though there have been
memorable gang bangs (e.g. that over-the-weekend assembler port mentioned in
Steven Levy's "Hackers"), most are perpetrated by large companies trying to meet
deadlines; the inevitable result is enormous buggy masses of code entirely
lacking in orthogonality. When market-driven managers make a list of all the
features the competition has and assign one programmer to implement each, the
probability of maintaining a coherent (or even functional) design goes
infinitesimal. See also firefighting, Mongolian Hordes technique, Conway's Law.
[Jargon File]
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garbageabetical order
