from Hacker News

Etymology of “Foo” (2001)

by ptio on 3/1/18, 12:24 AM with 14 comments

• by stcredzero on 3/1/18, 3:12 AM

  I always thought that Foo and Bar were derived from FooBar, which comes from FUBAR, which is an acronym for F#cked Up Beyond All Recognition. (Which seems related to SNAFU: Situation Normal; All F#cked Up.) This is mentioned at the end of the text.

• by Herodotus38 on 3/1/18, 5:07 AM

  That was actually much more interesting and detailed than I was expecting. I didn't know about all the pre-WWII foo usage in comics, popular slang, and cartoons. I also found the bit about the existence of "foo clubs" odd. It's like a meme where we only have scraps of the 7th iteration.

• by nikofeyn on 3/1/18, 6:29 AM

  this memo is kind of funny in its informational tone. i had always just assumed foo and bar came from fubar once i became familiar with the usage.

  on another note, i have always disliked the usage of these terms. they stand only for internal lingo and serve no useful purpose. in every case, there are better names that can be used, and i feel foo and bar do nothing but distract me from the example and use case at hand. also, as a student in my first assembly programming course, the professor just started using foo and bar indiscriminately and frequently. i was thoroughly confused at least the entire duration of that lecture and maybe the next until i realized these were seemingly arbitrary words he had picked and not, as i had originally thought, meaningful words or even instructions. i'll take a and b any day.

• by jachee on 3/1/18, 2:31 AM

  I aspire to be able to be as seriously silly as an RFC author on April First. Seldom does a joke have such well-researched due diligence.

• by grondilu on 3/1/18, 2:35 AM

  I wonder if it's somehow related to the French "fou" which means "crazy".

• by leoc on 3/1/18, 3:10 AM

  Forward Observation Officer isn't a backronym: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_observer#British_For...