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Phrases in computing that might need retiring

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Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#211
post #96

Object-Oriented Programming: "Luckily the industry doesn’t really use this term any more" Wait really? What world are they living in? Am I just out of touch or something?

You aren't out of touch. Some people are just living in bubbles. There's still a massive amount of Java, C# and other OOP work going on out there.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#212
post #210
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.

It is a very real concept, but as a term it's no longer useful because the MBA's have heard it already. I don't look like a stereotypical programmer (tall white guy with good hair), so I hear what the "business owners" say when they think there are no programmer dorks in the room, and they passionately believe that "technical debt", "code quality" and "refactoring" are all scams that were made up to siphon money out of productive organizations (the article itself hints at a similar belief on the part of the author).

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#213
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…

In the video realm, Corp IT always came in and screwed up the production gear because they were so confused by the use cases. Instead, we started Production IT department. A corp IT sees a large array and wants to tune it to make lots of small random I/O, prod IT sets it up to make large continuous I/O. Prod IT sees a network port and plugs it into the corp network. Prod IT connects it to the isolated storage network, and doesn't even give the nodes access to corp network. Corp IT wants to install management software, Prod IT knows it'll only still resources from performance and doesn't bother.

If a corp IT and prod IT employee come in contact, a huge explosion occurs not quite as bad as matter/anti-matter. A healthy argument on best practices nontheless

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#214
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we go by the original usage of the term, then yes, it's different skillsets between Ops and DevOps. You can't announce an Ops position with a DevOps title since the two are different by definition. However, even if we go by your definition that it is the same thing, then the "Dev" part is completely redundant and we should just call it "Ops", since it's by definition the same thing and it doesn't warrant a new tit…

So there is a specific role and skillset for DevOps engineers (going by the original usage of the term), correct? Don't you feel that if you can hire a “DevOps engineer” for a specific role on a software team then we have all lost at using the phrase DevOps?

> So there is a specific role and skillset for DevOps engineers (going by the original usage of the term), correct?

Be careful with that misquoting there: I said "different skillsets", I didn't say necessarily roles. An Ops and a DevOps person will know different things.

> Don't you feel that if you can hire a “DevOps engineer” for a specific role on a software team then we have all lost at using the phrase DevOps?

So, you copy-pasted this from the article. If so I'll assume you're agreeing with them and this conversation can be over.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#215

I was expecting "master" and "slave" to show up since I've seen that argument being made ( https://www.eetimes.com/its-time-for-ieee-to-retire-master-s... ), but I have a hard time taking it seriously. I agree about AI though. The rush to exploit the phrase as a marketing term has killed it's original meaning. Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it. I've always kind of liked the distin…

Same (re: master / slave)... At a previous job, a coworker presented a compelling argument for removing "whitelist" and "blacklist" terminology from our codebases / jargon. Even though the etymologies of the words don't describe them as being based on race / racial judgments, their first recorded usages were in the 16th-17th centuries, when mass enslavement was in full swing. Setting aside the historical context, the…

> Even though the etymologies of the words don't describe them as being based on race / racial judgments

Then why should we change them? I know you said:

> Setting aside the historical context, they also help reenforce the idea of "white is good, black is bad"

But if we can't trust people to infer a word's meaning based on the context, we have a much bigger problem imo. Another example of this is the word gentleman. If you refer to a gentleman's club, that's a very different thing than calling a man a gentleman. We trust that English speaking people don't start conflating the two contexts together, because most people possess the basic ability to understand the idea of context.

I don't get when or why we suddenly decided that people can't infer the context of words. And in this specific case, if you can't infer that a blacklist is not a racial insult, but just a term that denotes a list of denials, then you have some other issues to sort out.

Put another way, should we stop referring to profitable markets as markets in the black[1] because they put a positive spin on the color black? No, it's just dumb. I trust that the average human is capable of parsing out an inferred context of a common phrase in their native language.

Furthermore, master isn't even synonymous with slavery[2]. We have "a master craftsman" and "master chefs", which aren't evil. The word "boss" is also derived from master[0], but I'm sure we would all agree that it's ridiculous to remove the word "boss" from our vernacular because it may have been used to denote something else in the past, and that thing it denoted (master) was used to denote a specific use of the word (slave master) at some point in a specific time of history that was also a bad thing.

Edit: I'd also like to add that colors denote a certain symbolism (that may vary across cultures), and has nothing to do with racist intent. White has been used for centuries to denote purity, and black is the opposite of that. People aren't black/white in that sense, because skin color isn't even black/white in that sense. The Bible refers to white as a symbol of purity, but the Jews were not "white" by any means. And apparently in Chinese culture, black is associated with heaven[3]. That doesn't mean that your skin color makes you "heavenly" or "evil". I trust the average person is able to infer context.

[0]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/boss

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/black.asp

[2]: https://www.etymonline.com/word/master

[3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_in_Chinese_culture

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#216

Sinister used to mean left handed. "A shambles" used to mean a slaughterhouse. Sanction used to mean allow, now it means not allow. It is fine for words to change meaning, even to their own opposite. Natural language has done that forever. Edit: you're all right, sanction has both meanings.

What’s your thoughts about the term “literally”? It’s one of my bugbears, because the term lost its meaning and I don’t know of any good replacement…

It's just the latest in a long line of adverbs for truthfulness that morph into something else. "very" (from latin for true), "really" (from real), "honestly", "truly" and so on. "Actually" seems to still hold on to some meaning but is now on the verge of becoming socially unacceptable. I guess this says something about human nature.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#218
post #88

"Full stack" (except when referring to someone who can do everything from CPU design and assembly programming right up to UI work)

I am an EE, that works with microcontrollers on a daily basis. I know some html I play around with sdl and ncurses a bit, I can do some internet stuff. I am clearly a full stack dev right?

Do you have a microservices-based REST API with graphical frontend (web and Electron based) deployed/available on redundant cloud providers enabling secured, direct interaction with high- and low-level operations of your microcontrollers, such as environmental data gathering, software/firmware deployment and updates?

That's a fuller stack. I probably missed some things.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#219

I was expecting "master" and "slave" to show up since I've seen that argument being made ( https://www.eetimes.com/its-time-for-ieee-to-retire-master-s... ), but I have a hard time taking it seriously. I agree about AI though. The rush to exploit the phrase as a marketing term has killed it's original meaning. Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it. I've always kind of liked the distin…

>Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it You mean Artificial General Intelligence? ;) On a more serious note, it is a shame that we ended up calling it AI instead of something innocuous like "pattern matching code". There's so much bullshit and misunderstanding that wouldn't be there if we had named it something less impressive

This isn't really a problem of the term itself; it's more that people want their software product to sound impressive, so they borrow the term liberally. That is, it's marketing's fault.

People have been arguing since Minsky or before where the "Actual Artificial Intelligence" line falls. Thermostats? Graphing calculators? Roombas? Software games? ...

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#220
post #136

I am curious about this statement: [OOP] might mean ... “modules, but using the word class” I would argue that "modules" is almost as useless of a term as "OOP". What does the author mean exactly?

I think modules are collections of methods unattached to a class/object.
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