weeds

1. Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from "off in the weeds". Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds."

2. At CDC/ETA before its demise, the phrase "go off in the weeds" was equivalent to IBM's branch to Fishkill and mainstream hackerdom's jump off into never-never land.

[Jargon File]