El Camino Real (computers)

El Camino Real (computers): In the FORTRAN language, a 'real' quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant digits, and a `double precision' quantity is a larger floating-point number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other languages have similar 'real' types). When a hacker from MIT, Guy L. Steele, visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on 'real', he started calling it 'El Camino Double Precision' -- but when he was told that the road was hundreds of miles long (resulting in extremely large street address numbers), he renamed it 'El Camino Bignum' ("bignum" is LISP jargon for an indefinite-precision integer), and that name has stuck.

In recent years, the synonym "El Camino Virtual" has been reported as an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Silicon Valley. Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard to refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as "El Camino Imaginary". One popular theory is that the intersection is located near Moffett Field - where they keep all those complex planes.