n. Another archetypal dumb embedded-systems application, like toaster (which superseded it). During one
period (1983-84) in the deliberations of ANSI X3J11 (the
C standardization committee) this was the canonical example of a
really stupid, memory-limited computation environment.
"You can't
require 'printf(3)' to be part of the default runtime library
-- what if you're targeting an elevator controller?"
Elevator
controllers became important rhetorical weapons on both sides of
several holy wars.