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An acronym for "a Small Matter Of Programming". A piece of program code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly greater than its intellectual complexity.
This term is used to refer to a program that could obviously be written but is not worth the trouble. It is also used ironically to imply that a difficult problem can be easily solved because a program can be written to do it. The irony is that it is very clear that writing such a program will be a great deal of work.
Example: "It's easy to change a FORTRAN compiler to compile COBOL as well; it's just a small matter of programming."}}
The IBM Jargon Dictionary defines SMOP as:<ref>{{cite web|url=https://comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf|quote=SMOP|title=''IBM Jargon Dictionary, Tenth Edition''|publisher=[[IBM]]
{{quote|'''SMOP''' (''smop'') ''n.'' Something quite possible, but requiring unavailable resources to achieve. "Why isn't that function available in the program?" − "It's just a Simple Matter Of Programming". (The implication being that, given a few person-centuries, all things are possible.) Also '''SMOUP''' (''smoop''), a Simple Matter Of Micro-Programming (if handwritten, using a Greek mu). See also ''how hard would it be.''}}
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The term was also explored and expanded upon by computer scientist [[Bonnie Nardi]] in her 1993 book ''A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing''.<ref>{{cite book
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==See also==
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