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0xCAFEBABE & 0xFEEDFACE (2003)
bbum's rants, code & references Laziness, Impatience, Hubris... Tuesday, January 28, 2003 0xCAFEBABE & 0xFEEDFACE Recently, the origin of the magic numbers of 0xCAFEBABE and 0xFEEDFACE came up in an email conversation between a number of ex-NeXT folks.
I think the truth of this story is that there are only a limited number of "cute" words you can spell with hex characters, so the likelyhood of two independent groups picking the same ones isn't all that surprising. Definitely a case of Computer history is written by those with CVS commit rights... A followup response from someone else stated: Cafe babe was a specific barista at Pete's Coffee at Homer & High in Palo Alto.When Java was Oak, and FirstPerson was the Green Project the magic number was chosen by James and other aficionados of fine coffee. I used CAFEDEAD for the object file format, and in grepping for 4 character hex words that fit after "CAFE" (it seemed to be a good theme) I hit on BABE and decided to use it.
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