Product Code Database
A kludge or kluge () is a workaround or makeshift solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend, and hard to maintain. Its only benefit is that it rapidly solves an important problem using available resources. A famous example is the improvised scrubber that kept the astronauts alive on Apollo 13. 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.
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.
Cf. German ('dumpling', 'clod', diminutive Klößchen), Low Saxon klut, klute, Dutch kluit, perhaps related to Low German diminutive klütje ('dumpling', 'clod'), standard Danish language kludder ('mess, disorder, clutter') and Danish Jutland dialect klyt ('piece of bad workmanship'),.
Arguments against the derivation from German klug:
An alternative etymology suggests that the kludge spelling in particular derives ultimately from a word in Scots language (a language closely related to English): cludge or cludgie/cludgey meaning 'toilet' (in either the room or device sense), 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.
This Jargon File entry notes that kludge apparently derives via British military slang from Scots language 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:
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:
Perhaps the ultimate kludge was the first United States 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 Project Gemini 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". (1999). 9780160589928, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans. . ISBN 9780160589928
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 . 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 Union 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.
The neuroscientist David Linden discusses how intelligent design proponents have misconstrued brain anatomy:
The research psychologist Gary Marcus's book 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:
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.
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