Does anyone know why software developers, computer and other electronic engineers always use the spelling "foobar" for FUBAR?

They are two different things that happen to be pronounced the same: http://catb.org/jargon/html/F/foobar.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variables

@phaedryx The story gets even more interwoven if you click on the “foo” link in your first link—seems the words may have crossed paths but which crossed first???
http://catb.org/jargon/html/F/foo.html

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter#Etymology

O foo!

Here is my guess. foo came first. FUBAR may or may not have been influenced by foo. foobar is definitely from FUBAR. It was convenient to split it into foo and bar as a humorous way of constructing two related meta terms.

@LostInParadise

What about this

It’s not uncommon to have thing and thing-bar in areas like electronics, computer theory, and mathematics when you have two choices or you want to denote something and its opposite or you just need to create a new symbol.

So: foo and foo-bar

This whole topic has been a revelation to me! Thanks.

@phaedryx , Well maybe. I wonder if there are any cases of using both foo and foobar.