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A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

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Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#31

Post by bambax »

jraph wrote: post #14
bambax wrote: post #7

As a user, I want to be enabled / to be able to do more things with a piece of software than what I could do without it. I do NOT want to be "protected".

I didn't take "protect" the same way as you at all. Big tech is putting inside our heads that users shall be protected by removing control from them and that's detrimental. This gatekeeping is not protection, it's dystopia. Protect can be taken as in "Protect the user from bad decisions", or as in "Protect users' freedom" [1], which would completely go your way. I understood protect as "make the user your first prior…

Ok -- but then the word 'protect' is too ambiguous and overused, and we should find a better one.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#33

Post by KaiserPro »

bambax wrote: post #7

As a user, I want to be enabled / to be able to do more things with a piece of software than what I could do without it. I do NOT want to be "protected".

The people that operated looms in cotton mills used to say the same thing. A guard would get in the way, It slows me down when I try to do x. "I'm a skilled technician, just let me have access"

They'd keep saying that until they lost a hand, arm, leg to the big swirling mass of metal.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#35

Post by OfficeChad »

KaiserPro wrote: post #33
bambax wrote: post #7

As a user, I want to be enabled / to be able to do more things with a piece of software than what I could do without it. I do NOT want to be "protected".

The people that operated looms in cotton mills used to say the same thing. A guard would get in the way, It slows me down when I try to do x. "I'm a skilled technician, just let me have access" They'd keep saying that until they lost a hand, arm, leg to the big swirling mass of metal.

[dead]

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#36

Post by qsort »

globnomulous wrote: post #25

This is horrible, horrible spaghetti Latin. "Tueor" in this context sounds very weird to me -- more "oversee" or "watch" than "protect." 'custos' is, to my ear, the idiomatic noun for "protector," and that noun sounds appropriate in this context. "defendo" (a verb meaning 'defend') would probably be more appropriate if we want to insist on using a verb. "Usor" is nonsense -- literal, actual nonsense. It isn't Latin.…

Veritas used to represent abstract truth is not out of place. Obviously it assumes a different connotation in a Christian context ("Veritas vos liberabit" from the gospel of John being the obvious example), but it's not the only usage. See examples here: https://latinitium.com/latin-dictionaries/?t=lsn50557

Data is the past participle of the verb "do". It doesn't necessarily imply that usage.

I do agree that the construction is weird though, in particular the infinitive.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#37

Post by globnomulous »

phtrivier wrote: post #28
globnomulous wrote: post #25

This is horrible, horrible spaghetti Latin. "Tueor" in this context sounds very weird to me -- more "oversee" or "watch" than "protect." 'custos' is, to my ear, the idiomatic noun for "protector," and that noun sounds appropriate in this context. "defendo" (a verb meaning 'defend') would probably be more appropriate if we want to insist on using a verb. "Usor" is nonsense -- literal, actual nonsense. It isn't Latin.…

What would be the proper translation of the moto, then ?

Beats me.

The very idea of a "user" is, in every phase of Latin that I know, gobbledygook. There's no translation for it. It makes as much sense as "haver" would make to us ("haver of what?"). Maybe "emptores" (buyers)? Sort of?

"Data," in our sense, too, sounds wrong to me as a concept in Classical Latin -- too disembodied for effective, accurate translation. Maybe 'cognoscenda,' "that which is to be known/understood," would come close to the intended sense and still be somewhat idiomatic.

"Vera" or "verita" sounds, to me, like the right language for the idea of "something true."

And like I said, "defendo" sounds like the right verb.

The omission of conjunctions sounds as abrupt, curt, and pompous in Latin as it does in English: "guard the user, the data, the truth." Only Sallust and Tacitus get to write this way.

So maybe we could correct it to something like "defende emptoresque cognoscendaque veraque?" No, actually, I take it back. That sounds deranged and wrong, kind of like the raving you might hear from one of the street-corner prophets in Life of Brian. Protecting those things makes no sense, and even the grouping of those three concepts in a single list makes no sense. It sounds like the product of a disordered, unhealthy mind.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#38

Post by globnomulous »

qsort wrote: post #36
globnomulous wrote: post #25

This is horrible, horrible spaghetti Latin. "Tueor" in this context sounds very weird to me -- more "oversee" or "watch" than "protect." 'custos' is, to my ear, the idiomatic noun for "protector," and that noun sounds appropriate in this context. "defendo" (a verb meaning 'defend') would probably be more appropriate if we want to insist on using a verb. "Usor" is nonsense -- literal, actual nonsense. It isn't Latin.…

Veritas used to represent abstract truth is not out of place. Obviously it assumes a different connotation in a Christian context ("Veritas vos liberabit" from the gospel of John being the obvious example), but it's not the only usage. See examples here: https://latinitium.com/latin-dictionaries/?t=lsn50557 Data is the past participle of the verb "do". It doesn't necessarily imply that usage. I do agree that the cons…

I think we're saying the same thing about "veritas." I'm saying, in essence, that if I ran into this absolutely bizarre expression in a manuscript or papyrus, and I wanted to publish an edition of the text, I might capitalize the "v."

(Edit: I just realized why. It's because the action "tueor" describes has a strongly physical connotation. It's as though the author wrote "clean/wash the truth." You don't watch (in tueor's sense) an abstract concept; you 'watch' (tueris) something physically manifest. Using tueor this way is how you'd talk or write about a god, not a concept.)

"Tuere" isn't an infinitive. It's the second person singular present imperative active of the deponent 'tueor.' As a deponent, it has only passive-voice forms, which have active-voice sense, so (edit: infinitival) 'tuere' isn't a valid form, because it's the present infinite active, a form that a deponent verb by definition can't have.

Edit: "data" in this usage would mean "gifts." That is the idiomatic meaning of the fourth principal part of the verb when it's used in the neuter plural. This isn't debatable. It's Latin 101 basics, almost certain to appear in the very first set of exercises and vocab lists that any beginning Latin student will encounter (and it's certain to be the answer to a question on your first vocab quiz). See here[0], esp: 'Part. perf. sometimes (mostly in poets) subst.: dăta , ōrum, n., gifts, presents.'

[0] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#39

Post by andrepd »

KaiserPro wrote: post #33
bambax wrote: post #7

As a user, I want to be enabled / to be able to do more things with a piece of software than what I could do without it. I do NOT want to be "protected".

The people that operated looms in cotton mills used to say the same thing. A guard would get in the way, It slows me down when I try to do x. "I'm a skilled technician, just let me have access" They'd keep saying that until they lost a hand, arm, leg to the big swirling mass of metal.

Apples and oranges. Installing an encrypted chat app, a torrent client, or an open source OS stripped of spyware will not mangle my limbs, but big tech and governments are hard at work trying to make these a thing of the past.

People on hn would do well to stop giving cover to such disastrous pretenses.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#40

Post by pjmlp »

rich_sasha wrote: post #27

I like this approach, but as it won't survive one VC pitch, I guess that's that. Google basically had primum non nocere as a motto and we all know how that ended.

That was marketing material, for the same kinds of folks that believe company guidelines are worth anything, beyond yearly checks on required internal trainings.
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