Re eating one's own dogfood: We have the same term in our workplace (granted, only because I introduced it). My code is peppered with comments that say "TODO" and indicate something that ought to be done eventually, but a comment saying "DOGFOOD" (both keywords are always at the beginning of the comment, in all caps) means something that must be done before this program can be used even internally. It's a handy thing to search for, as the word "dogfood" is never going to appear in a quoted string - if it does, I can always just say "dog-food" or something - so even a case-insensitive search will come up with the right results.

Regarding zeroing the accumulator: I've done exactly the same thing when programming an Intel 80x86 (I started on the 8086 and moved up from there into the modern Pentiums). XORing a register with itself is the quickest and tightest way to clear it. Using "MOV AX,0" requires three bytes (opcode and two bytes of literal 16-bit zero), whereas "XOR AX,AX" is only two; it's even more noticeable with the 386-and-higher extended registers, where "MOV EAX,0" requires five bytes (four bytes of 32-bit zero). My C/C++ compiler always zeroes registers this way, so I'd assume it's still the best way (although I haven't studied opcode timing tables in ages, and probably both XOR reg,reg and MOV reg,imm take one clock).

在20世纪80年代早期的某个时候，我们在PL/I中为公用事业编写财务建模代码。接到一个客户的电话，说代码在评论之后就爆炸了

/* Honest this works */

这家伙用了我们的标准金融方程花了大约15页的代数把一堆代码组合成一个方程。在三里岛事件后，当公用事业公司不得不以巨大的代价注销他们的核电站时，这个方程失败了，因为FIXED BIN 15(整数)溢出，如果代数没有发生，就不会发生这种溢出。

//休斯顿，我们有麻烦了

来自usenet的经典:

Teradyne硬件建模器代码的深层是一个例程 一大堆十六进制数字到SYS$QIO调用中。唯一的评论是 “这里发生了奇怪的魔法”。

Re eating one's own dogfood: We have the same term in our workplace (granted, only because I introduced it). My code is peppered with comments that say "TODO" and indicate something that ought to be done eventually, but a comment saying "DOGFOOD" (both keywords are always at the beginning of the comment, in all caps) means something that must be done before this program can be used even internally. It's a handy thing to search for, as the word "dogfood" is never going to appear in a quoted string - if it does, I can always just say "dog-food" or something - so even a case-insensitive search will come up with the right results.

Regarding zeroing the accumulator: I've done exactly the same thing when programming an Intel 80x86 (I started on the 8086 and moved up from there into the modern Pentiums). XORing a register with itself is the quickest and tightest way to clear it. Using "MOV AX,0" requires three bytes (opcode and two bytes of literal 16-bit zero), whereas "XOR AX,AX" is only two; it's even more noticeable with the 386-and-higher extended registers, where "MOV EAX,0" requires five bytes (four bytes of 32-bit zero). My C/C++ compiler always zeroes registers this way, so I'd assume it's still the best way (although I haven't studied opcode timing tables in ages, and probably both XOR reg,reg and MOV reg,imm take one clock).

// this comment included for the benefit of anyone grepping for swearwords: shit.