random (adj.)

1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird.

The system's been behaving pretty randomly.

2. Assorted; undistinguished.

Who was at the conference?

Just a bunch of random business types.

3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected.

He's just a random loser.

4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organized.

The program has a random set of misfeatures.

That's a random name for that function.

Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly.

5. In no particular order, though deterministic.

The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly.

6. Arbitrary.

It generates a random name for the scratch file.

7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What randomness!

8. n. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the way.

9. n. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the hacker speaking); the noun form of sense 2.

I went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions

.

10. n. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also J. Random, some random X.

11. [UK] Conversationally, a non sequitur or something similarly out-of-the-blue. As in:

Stop being so random!

This sense equates to ‘hatstand’, taken from the Viz comic character

Roger Irrelevant - He's completely Hatstand.