v. To haphazardly build an ugly yet functional object.
1998
No one is going to steal the efforts of a newbie crufting together eye nausea in FrontPage. But then, those newbies crufting together eye nausea are the people most likely to think that Page Protect is a way kewl idea.
1993
Ages (couldn't think of any better way to present this; you need a 66-line emacs to fully appreciate this, or just cruft together a program in your fav programming language & graph it!)
1990 (earliest)
CRUFT TOGETHER v. To throw together something ugly but temporarily workable.
The Jargon File states that the origin of cruft (which it defines as "an unpleasant substance") is unknown, but that it possibly derives from MIT students poking fun at Harvard's Cruft Hall. Another possibility is an association with the famous Crufts Dog Show. Thanks go out to Marty Breslow for suggesting crufty.