A kludge or kluge is a workaround or makeshift solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend, and hard to maintain. This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, animation and government. It is similar in meaning to the naval term jury rig.
The word has alternate spellings (kludge and kluge), pronunciations (and, rhyming with judge and stooge, respectively), and several proposed etymologies.
The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1989), cites Jackson W. Granholm's 1962 "How to Design a Kludge" article[1] in the American computer magazine Datamation.[2]
OED defines these two kludge cognates as: bodge 'to patch or mend clumsily' and fudge 'to fit together or adjust in a clumsy, makeshift, or dishonest manner'. The OED entry also includes the verb kludge ('to improvise with a kludge or kludges') and kludgemanship ('skill in designing or applying kludges').
Granholm humorously imagined a fictitious source for the term:
Although OED accepts Granholm's coinage of the term (not the fanciful pseudo-etymology quoted above), there are examples of its use before the 1960s.
American Yiddish speakers use (Yiddish: {{linktext|קלוג) to mean 'too smart by half', the reflected meaning of German German: klug ('clever'). This may explain the idea of 'clever but clumsy and temporary', as well as the pronunciation variation from German.[3] A reasonable translation of kludge into German yields German: {{linktext|Krücke i.e. 'crutch'.
Cf. German German: {{linktext|Kloß ('clod', diminutive German: Klößchen), Low Saxon Low German; Low Saxon; German, Low; Saxon, Low: klut, Low German; Low Saxon; German, Low; Saxon, Low: klute, Dutch Dutch; Flemish: kluit,[4] perhaps related to Low German diminutive Low German; Low Saxon; German, Low; Saxon, Low: klütje ('dumpling', 'clod'), standard Danish Danish: kludder ('mess, disorder') and Danish Jutland dialect klyt ('piece of bad workmanship'),.[5]
Arguments against the derivation from German German: klug:
An alternative etymology[6] suggests that the kludge spelling in particular derives ultimately from a word in Scots (a language closely related to English): Scots: cludge or Scots: cludgie/cludgey meaning 'toilet' (in either the room or device sense),[7] with the kluge spelling possibly deriving from German, until the two terms were confused in the mid-20th century, as British and American (respectively) military slang.
The Jargon File (a.k.a. The New Hacker's Dictionary), a glossary of computer programmer slang maintained by Eric S. Raymond, differentiates kludge from kluge and cites usage examples pre-dating 1962. Kluge seems to have the sense of 'overcomplicated', while kludge has only the sense of 'poorly done'.
This Jargon File entry notes that kludge apparently derives via British military slang from Scots Scots: cludge/cludgie ('toilet'), and became confused with American kluge during or after World War II.
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".
Kluge "was common Navy slang in the World War II era for any piece of electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at sea". A summary of a 1947 article in the New York Folklore Quarterly states:[8] [9]
The Jargon File further includes kluge around, 'to avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a kluge', and kluge up, 'to lash together a quick hack to perform a task'.
After Granholm's 1962 article popularized the kludge variant, both were interchangeably used and confused. The Jargon File concludes:
In aerospace, a kludge was a temporary design using separate commonly available components that were not flightworthy in order to proof the design and enable concurrent software development while the integrated components were developed and manufactured. The term was in common enough use to appear in a fictional movie about the US space program.[10]
Perhaps the ultimate kludge was the first US space station, Skylab. Its two major components, the Saturn Workshop and the Apollo Telescope Mount, began development as separate projects (the SWS was kludged from the S-IVB stage of the Saturn 1B and Saturn V launch vehicles, the ATM was kludged from an early design for the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module). Later the SWS and ATM were folded into the Apollo Applications Program, but the components were to have been launched separately, then docked in orbit. In the final design, the SWS and ATM were launched together, but for the single-launch concept to work, the ATM had to pivot 90 degrees on a truss structure from its launch position to its on-orbit orientation, clearing the way for the crew to dock its Apollo Command/Service Module at the axial docking port of the Multiple Docking Adapter.
The Airlock Module's manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas, even recycled the hatch design from its Gemini spacecraft and kludged what was originally designed for the conical Gemini Command Module onto the cylindrical Skylab Airlock Module. The Skylab project, managed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center, was seen by the Manned Spacecraft Center (later Johnson Space Center) as an invasion of its historical role as the NASA center for manned spaceflight. Thus, MSC personnel missed no opportunity to disparage the Skylab project, calling it "the kludge".[11]
In modern computing terminology, a "kludge" (or often a "hack") is a solution to a problem, the performance of a task, or a system fix which is inefficient, inelegant ("hacky"), or even incomprehensible, but which somehow works. It is similar to a workaround, but quick and ugly. To "kludge around something" is to avoid a bug or difficulty by building a kludge, perhaps exploiting properties of the bug itself. A kludge is often used to modify a working system while avoiding fundamental changes, or to ensure backwards compatibility. Hack can also be used with a positive connotation, for a quick solution to a frustrating problem.[12] [13]
A kludge is often used to fix an unanticipated problem in an earlier kludge; this is essentially a kind of cruft.
A solution might be a kludge if it fails in corner cases. An intimate knowledge of the problem domain and execution environment is typically required to build a corner-case kludge. More commonly, a kludge is a heuristic which was expected to work almost always, but ends up failing often.
A 1960s Soviet anecdote tells of a computer part which needed a slightly delayed signal to work. Rather than setting up a timing system, the kludge was to connect long coils of internal wires to slow the electrical signal.
Another type of kludge is the evasion of an unknown problem or bug in a computer program. Rather than continue to struggle to diagnose and fix the bug, the programmer may write additional code to compensate. For example, if a variable keeps ending up doubled, a kludge may be to add later code that divides by two rather than to search for the original incorrect computation.
In computer networking, use of NAT (Network Address Translation) (RFC 1918) or PAT (Port Address Translation) to cope with the shortage of IPv4 addresses is an example of a kludge.
In FidoNet terminology, kludge refers to a piece of control data embedded inside a message.
See also: Evolutionary baggage. The kludge or kluge metaphor has been adapted in fields such as evolutionary neuroscience, particularly in reference to the human brain.
The neuroscientist David Linden discusses how intelligent design proponents have misconstrued brain anatomy:[14]
The research psychologist Gary Marcus's book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind compares evolutionary kluges with engineering ones like manifold vacuum-powered windshield wipers – when accelerating or driving uphill, "Your wipers slowed to a crawl, or even stopped working altogether." Marcus described a biological kluge:[15]
In John Varley's 1985 short story "Press Enter_", the antagonist, a reclusive hacker, adopts the identity Charles Kluge.
In the science fiction television series Andromeda, genetically engineered human beings called Nietzscheans use the term disparagingly to refer to genetically unmodified humans.
In a 2012 article, political scientist Steven Teles used the term "kludgeocracy" to criticize the complexity of social welfare policy in the United States. Teles argues that institutional and political obstacles to passing legislation often drive policy makers to accept expedient fixes rather than carefully thought out reforms.[16] [17]