Nonsense technobabble used in a production context.
Reticulating splines started off as an in-joke at Maxis and grew to fame with the widespread popularity of The Sims. While it does have a "real" meaning, this
definition isn'
t actually correct in the context of its use. It'
s really a programming joke.
Reticulating splines is essentially filler. Don'
t want to describe what's holding up the program? It's reticulating splines. Why isn'
t the Internet working? The splines aren'
t reticulated. Heck, don'
t want to explain your calculus assignment? We're reticulating splines this week.
See also processor gremlins for the computer hardware equivalent.