Is this what “reticulating splines” means, then? Almost 30 years later and I still don’t understand but the phrase is eternally trapped in my mind.
> The words 'reticulate' and 'spline' both have dictionary definitions, which has led several people to determine a meaning for the phrase, such as "to make a network of curved elements." However, Will Wright stated in an interview that the term itself is meaningless, as SimCity 2000 does not reticulate splines when generating terrain; the phrase was included in the game because it "sounded cool."
https://github.com/jgosar/mine-city-2000/blob/master/MineCit...