bit twiddling

1. (pejorative) An exercise in tuning (see tune) in which

incredible amounts of time and effort go to produce little

noticeable improvement, often with the result that the code

becomes incomprehensible.

2. Aimless small modification to a program, especially for

some pointless goal.

3. bit bashing, especially used for the act of frobbing the

device control register of a peripheral in an attempt to get

it back to a known state.

[Jargon File]