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lag n. [MUD, IRC; very common] When used without qualification this is synonymous with {netlag}. Curiously, people will often complain "I'm really lagged" when in fact it is their server or network connection that is lagging.
lamer n. [originally among Amiga fans] 1. Synonym for {luser}, not used much by hackers but common among {warez d00dz}, crackers, and {phreaker}s. A person who downloads much, but who never uploads. (Also known as leecher). Oppose {elite}. Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of {luser} does among hackers. 2. Someone who tries to crack a BBS. 3. Someone who annoys the sysop or other BBS users -- for instance, by posting lots of silly messages, uploading virus-ridden software, frequently dropping carrier, etc. Crackers also use it to refer to cracker {wannabee}s. In phreak culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than doing cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In {warez d00dz} culture, where the ability to wave around cracked commercial software within days of (or before) release to the commercial market is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware or something incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few years to anything older than 3 days). 'Lamer' is also much used in the IRC world in a similar sense to the above. This term seems to have originated in the Commodore-64 scene in the mid 1980s. It was popularized among Amiga crackers of the mid-1980s by 'Lamer Exterminator', the most famous and feared Amiga virus ever, which gradually corrupted non-write-protected floppy disks with bad sectors. The bad sectors, when looked at, were overwritten with repetitions of the string "LAMER!".
LAN party /lan par´tee/. An event to which several users bring their boxes and hook them up to a common LAN (Local Area Network), often for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games, especially action games such as Quake or Unreal Tournament. This is also a good venue for people to show-off their fancy new hardware. Such events can get pretty large, several hundred people attend the annual QuakeCon in Texas. The theoretical rationale behind LAN parties is that playing over the Internet often introduces too much lag in the playing experience -- but just as important is the special quality of trash-talking each other across the room while playing, and the instinctive social ritual of consuming vast amounts of food and drink together.
language lawyer n. A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question "if only you had thought to look there". Compare {wizard}, {legal}, {legalese}.
languages of choice n. {C}, {Perl}, {Python}, {Java} and {LISP} -- the dominant languages in open-source development. This list has changed over time, but slowly. Java bumped C++ off of it, and Python appears to be recruiting people who would otherwise gravitate to LISP (which used to be much more important than it is now). Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. The {Real Programmer}s who loved FORTRAN and assembler have pretty much all retired or died since 1990. Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {HLL} implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming. Most hackers tend to frown on languages like {Pascal} and Ada, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard everything even remotely connected with {COBOL} or other traditional {DP} languages as a total and unmitigated {loss}.
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