manularity

/man"yoo-la"ri-tee/ ("manual" + "granularity") A notional

measure of the manual labor required for some task,

particularly one of the sort that automation is supposed to

eliminate. "Composing English on paper has much higher

manularity than using a text editor, especially in the

revising stage." Hackers tend to consider manularity a

symptom of primitive methods; in fact, a true hacker

confronted with an apparent requirement to do a computing task

by hand will inevitably seize the opportunity to build

another tool (see toolsmith).

[Jargon File]

(1994-10-26)