1. Of a program, to run with no indication of progress and perhaps
without guarantee of ever finishing; esp. said of programs thought to be
executing tight loops of code. A program that is buzzing appears to be
catatonic, but never gets out of catatonia, while a
buzzing loop may eventually end of its own accord. The program
buzzes for about 10 seconds trying to sort all the names into
order.
See spin; see also
grovel.
2. [ETA Systems] To test a wire or printed circuit trace for continuity, esp. by applying an AC rather than DC signal. Some wire faults will pass DC tests but fail an AC buzz test.
3. To process an array or list in sequence, doing the same thing to
each element. This loop buzzes through the tz array looking for a
terminator type.