from
Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
TANSTAAFL
/tan'stah.fl/
[acronym, from Robert Heinlein's classic SF novel The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress.] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", often invoked
when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly
{heavyweight} technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of
software, or at the {signal-to-noise ratio} of unmoderated Usenet
newsgroups. "What? Don't tell me I have to implement a database back
end to get my address book program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you
know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high
concentration of science-fiction fans and political libertarians in
hackerdom (see Appendix B for discussion).
Outside hacker circles the variant TINSTAAFL ("There is No Such
Thing...") is apparently more common, and can be traced back to 1952
in the writings of ethicist Alvin Hansen. TANSTAAFL may well have
arisen from it by mutation.
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
TANSTAAFL
TNSTAAFL
/tan'stah-fl/ (From Robert Heinlein's classic "The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress") "There Ain't No Such Thing As A
Free Lunch".
Often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using
an unpleasantly {heavyweight} technique, or at the poor
quality of some piece of {free software}, or at the
{signal-to-noise ratio} of unmoderated {Usenet} newsgroups.
"What? Don't tell me I have to implement a {database} back end
to get my address book program to work!" "Well, TANSTAAFL you
know." This phrase owes some of its popularity to the high
concentration of science-fiction fans and political
libertarians in hackerdom.
[{Jargon File}]
(1995-02-28)