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Real World

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Acronyms, Wikipedia 0.04 sec.
1.Real World - Those institutions at which "programming" may be used in the same sentence as "Fortran", "COBOL", "RPG", "IBM", "DBASE", etc. Places where programs do such commercially necessary but intellectually uninspiring things as generating payroll checks and invoices.
2.Real World - The location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming.
3.Real World - A bizarre dimension in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5 (see code grinder).
4.Real World - Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the Real World." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the Real World is not unlike speaking of a deceased person. It is also noteworthy that on the campus of Cambridge University in England, there is a gaily-painted lamp-post which bears the label "REALITY CHECKPOINT". It marks the boundary between university and the Real World; check your notions of reality before passing. This joke is funnier because the Cambridge "campus" is actually coextensive with the centre of Cambridge.

See also fear and loathing, mundane, uninteresting.


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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
A library is a better world, built by the brains and hearts of poets and dreamers, as a refuge from the real world outside; and in it alone is to be found the land of milk and honey which it promises.
The Quest of the Golden Girl by le Gallienne, Richard View in context
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
Of Human Bondage by Maugham, W. Somerset View in context
You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.
The Iron Heel by London, Jack View in context
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