chainik

1 definition found

chainik - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  chainik
   /chi:'nik/
  
     [Russian, literally "teapot"] Almost synonymous with muggle.
  Implies
     both ignorance and a certain amount of willingness to learn, but does
     not necessarily imply as little experience or short exposure time as
     newbie and is not as derogatory as luser. Both a novice user and
     someone using a system for a long time without any understanding of
     the internals can be referred to as chainiks. Very widespread term in
     Russian hackish, often used in an English context by Russian-speaking
     hackers esp. in Israel (e.g. "Our new colleague is a complete
     chainik"). FidoNet discussion groups often had a "chainik" subsection
     for newbies and, well, old chainiks (eg. su.asm.chainik,
     ru.linux.chainik, ru.html.chainik). Public projects often have a
     chainik mailing list to keep the chainiks off the developers' and
     experienced users' discussions. Today, the word is slowly slipping
     into mainstream Russian due to the Russian translation of the popular
     yellow-black covered "foobar for dummies" series, which (correctly)
     uses "chainik" for "dummy", but its frequent (though not excessive)
     use is still characteristic hacker-speak.