DWIM

Definitions

1. Short for 'Do What I Mean', a design philosophy in which software attempts to infer intent and correct obvious user errors rather than failing on a literal reading. The term originates with Warren Teitelman's DWIM facility in BBN LISP, which silently repaired misspelled function names and unbalanced parentheses. DWIM is deeply ambivalent in hacker usage: it names a genuine convenience and, just as often, a source of maddening surprise when the system guesses wrong and does something confidently incorrect. The critique is captured in the classic complaint that DWIM really means 'Do What Teitelman Means'. Modern autocorrect and shell command suggestions are direct descendants.