The missing link is 'FURCHTBAR'. Smokey Stover started the meme of substituting ... | Hacker News

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		ahazred8ta on Oct 5, 2024 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: What is the history of the use of "foo" and "bar" ... The missing link is 'FURCHTBAR'. Smokey Stover started the meme of substituting 'foo' into words. 1930s german language classes turned furchtbar (frightful) into 'foo-bar'. The US military acronymized it into FUBAR. Apparently MIT adopted fu() and bar() as algebra placeholders. I'm partial to the 1938 song WHAT THIS COUNTRY NEEDS IS FOO - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W2pljKyCgwc

diggan on Oct 5, 2024 [–]

Seems like that retelling comes from an IETF RFC: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3092.txt (Etymology of "Foo")

d0mine on Oct 5, 2024 | [–]

The date of the rfc is Apr 1st -- unclear how truthful it is.

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