[UK: from the children's books]
1. Small and un-useful, but demonstrating a point. Noddy programs
are often written by people learning a new language or system. The
archetypal noddy program is hello world. Noddy code
may be used to demonstrate a feature or bug of a compiler. May be used of
real hardware or software to imply that it isn't worth using. This
editor's a bit noddy.
2. A program that is more or less instant to produce. In this use,
the term does not necessarily connote uselessness, but describes a
hack sufficiently trivial that it can be written and
debugged while carrying on (and during the space of) a normal conversation.
I'll just throw together a noddy awk script
to dump all the first fields.
In North America this might be called
a mickey mouse program. See
toy program.