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Explain it to me like I'm ten

timharford.com

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#51
post #2

[flagged]

Pirate books use it a lot!

I just checked on Gutenberg and was surprised to find that Hornblower doesn't use the word! But the second sentence of the first Sherlock Holmes book (A Study in Scarlet) introduces Watson as having been a member of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#52
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 5 years prior

Well I've got 38 years of reading experience and have never seen that word.

You know how you'll see people talking about the difference between having five years of experience, or having one year of experience five times in a row?

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#53
post #27

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

Incidentally, that's my favourite quote from Blaise Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

If only the LLM coding zealots were aware of this wisdom.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#54

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

Similarly I often read ticket or PR descriptions written by Claude that are so jargon-heavy that I just can't understand on first try. On one side it's a reality check because I always considered English to be close to a mother tongue for me, on the other side I never had to deal with words like "idempotent"... (Seriously, when did this become one of the go-to words to use?)

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#55

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

I find that this quote is not just applicable to writing of natural language like letters. It also applies to code, and is becoming more and more evident to me due to the use of AI.

I believe the idea presented transcends writing actually. For example you could also apply it to painting or sculpting. I think this points to the character of creative thinking where one "chips" away at a subject until it is considered as finished.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#56
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incidentally, that's my favourite quote from Blaise Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

My favorite quote for 10 years was from my 1993 college math professor: You will never go wrong attributing a pithy quote to Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain. And then the internet became popular.

I think your professor took that one from Franklin... or was it Mark Twain?

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pram is common in British English. I'm guessing you learned US English, which doesn't use it.

Yes, as slang for ‘perambulator’, which is basically ‘stroller’

Not really a stroller is a pushchair.

A pram is a kind of mobile bed for babies.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#59

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

Similarly I often read ticket or PR descriptions written by Claude that are so jargon-heavy that I just can't understand on first try. On one side it's a reality check because I always considered English to be close to a mother tongue for me, on the other side I never had to deal with words like "idempotent"... (Seriously, when did this become one of the go-to words to use?)

Idempotent is definitely a word that’s strangely awkward and alien to actually use, but makes reasonable sense when the etymology is known.

The closest alternative I can think of is debouncing/debounced

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#60

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

Similarly I often read ticket or PR descriptions written by Claude that are so jargon-heavy that I just can't understand on first try. On one side it's a reality check because I always considered English to be close to a mother tongue for me, on the other side I never had to deal with words like "idempotent"... (Seriously, when did this become one of the go-to words to use?)

Idempotency is a crucial trait in the world of web APIs (and any other system where commands that modify state might need to be retried due to communication failures). It's not a new word or concept, but it's certainly a niche one.
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