Talk:Learning Learning/Parable 2
What is foo and foobar? These terms are often seen in American documents about programming where they are often used as items in examples. Are they phrases from some well-known American children's book or something like that, something which Americans have known about since childhood yet which are unknown as regards their origin to people elsewhere?
- Foobar derives from an acronym, FUBAR, that was used by the American military during World War II. I don't know the history of how it became popular in computer science, but by the time I came to MIT in the mid70s, it was quite commonplace as a variable name in programming examples. (See the Wikipedia entry). Walter 21:11, 30 April 2006 (EDT)