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Phrases in computing that might need retiring

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Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#201

Post by jmfayard »

Banana699 wrote: post #194
jmfayard wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't do that in general. Certain attitudes OTOH are heavily gendered, like the psychology behind internet trolls who at the simplest level is that they want everyone's attention to orbit around them.

Do you think women and girls don't want everyone's attention to orbit around them ?

For women online in particular I'm pretty sure lots of them would rather enjoy less attention on them personally. Too much it not pleasant for _them_. I'm thinking in particular about friends who are content creators, minding her own business and receive comments on her look, insults, sexist comments, unsolicited dick pics, rape and death threats,... I'm sure sexism has nothing to do with that.

OK I'm done on this topic. Maybe there are a lots of women behind internet trolls and then I'm wrong, that's an empirical question. My comment was on "strongly disagree" vs "bullshitting"

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#202

Post by treis »

crdrost wrote: post #84
drewrv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech debt is one of the few metaphors I love because it’s so accurate. What a lot of engineers struggle with is that manageable levels of debt is fine for a business and in fact superior to being cash constrained. Some forms of debt are a headache if the business goes south but tech debt can be ignored if the software project goes nowhere. So the “terms” are good. Rather than complaining about tech debt, one should c…

I agree, and I love the metaphor too, but you have to admit that something about the metaphor isn’t reaching peoples’ brains the way a good metaphor does. A good litmus test here is to ask someone, “what if I told you that technical debt was originally a good thing?”... Like “Yes! Let’s go and get some technical debt, it will be great!” And so, can you understand why it might have started out that way? People who rea…

Simply because it's a lot nicer to say than "my predecessor did dumb stuff". Especially when the predecessor is still around and outranks you.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#203

Post by gspencley »

edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

> "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now"

Not to be pedantic but the metaphor is intended to speak to the economics of making short-term gains at the expense of long term savings. Developers need a way to communicate to business what cutting corners will cost them, financially. The concept of "technical debt" isn't perfect but it's a start. It speaks to the fact that if we don't adhere to engineering principles that allow for easy maintenance, expansion and extension then the company will pay the price when they want to engage in those endeavours.

If we're talking about these things in terms of "we hate ourselves" then we're having an emotional conversation. Unfortunately, that's all too common and it comes about because we didn't have these conversations in terms of dollars early enough. At that point you don't just have a technical debt problem, you have a morale problem. Engineers quit and people are brought in who don't understand the spaghetti coded system and end up exacerbating the problem because "we need to get this feature out before ."

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#204

Post by eric-burel »

InCityDreams wrote: post #46
rendall wrote: post #7

If this were a comment on HN, I would give it one of my rare downvotes. It's dismissive and negative without any compensating value or positivity. Maybe suggestions of terms to use?

Genuine question. Why bother downvoting, and not just move along? Perhaps there should be a button for 'disagree strongly'.

From the standpoint of someone discovering Hackernews, it's renowned for accepting (or at least upvoting to the top) only quality contributions, while this article is literally a shitpost.

I've added Twitter to my blocksite and redirect to Hackernews homepage, so that I get smarter everytime I am tempted to read social networks during my productive time. An article like this makes me feel like I should redirect Hackernews to Twitter instead.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#206

Post by jayd16 »

phpisthebest wrote: post #172
rendall wrote: post #7

If this were a comment on HN, I would give it one of my rare downvotes. It's dismissive and negative without any compensating value or positivity. Maybe suggestions of terms to use?

I always find the position of telling people to never point out problems, only suggestions or solutions odd. From something as basic as a management philosophy of "don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions" to this "Don't suggest terms not to use, suggest terms to use" A person can identify a problem without having a solution, or identify something is wrong without knowing the full solution. So in thi…

It's not that you can't do it, its just low effort noise without a solution. Often times the downsides are apparent and the complaints don't add much without some discussion of alternatives.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#208

Post by JJMcJ »

jon-wood wrote: post #90
edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

> also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of everyone's shit" but with a flashy name that sounds important so mgmt will agree to it If that's what "devops" is now, sure, kill the term. Devop is not a job title, and I will die on that hill. The concept of DevOps is close collaboration between development and infrastructure teams throughou…

Or else "let's have the programmers do production support too, they're paid to much to get a full night's sleep".

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#209

Post by lasereyes136 »

AI is the computer science term for some magic we will discover in the future. Once an AI technique becomes something real and useful it gets it's own name and is no longer AI. If we could all agree that AI just means something we don't understand yet, it might still be a useful term.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#210

Post by JJMcJ »

edrxty wrote: post #8

Strong disagree on "technical debt" Rather, the entire world is built on it and there's some level of acceptance required, but we definitely need a shorthand phrase for "we're doing something stupid that will save us time now and make us hate ourselves a year from now" Edit: thinking on it, also "devops". It's really job title for "sysadmin but paid and owned by the software department to keep ITs fingers out of ever…

Having worked on projects drowning in technical debt, it's a very real concept.
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