Classic programming terminology preservation. - Keep Sociology out of the Sciences - Share experiences and techniques around preservation of original programming terminology.

["Controlled Demolition"]

wokerotting terms is pretty bad, but there is another type of replacement going on too.

• every time i say hacking i have to specify that i mean it in the MIT sense
• memory units have been circumcised to match powers of 10 (kibibyte and such had to be introduced)
• inversion of control is now something your java framework does with your object initialization
• unit test means any kind of test
• artificial intelligence refers to machine learning only and recently even that is narrowing down to LLMs
• processor word now marks 2 bytes because intel said so
• DOS is equivalent with DDOS-ing a server.
• a javascript array is just a vector... or list depending on who you ask, but most definitely not an array

for each of these, thing was publicized about or straight up marketed without context or explanation, then the new meaning gained critical mass and you can no longer express yourself clearly because the meaning others know is a coin-toss.

It's just narrative dilution. Happens all the time. It is your duty to smack the wrists of anyone who uses a specific technical term wrong, such as in the case of unit tests. But terms such as AI have been do diluted and polluted that they are now nothing but buzzwords and are entirely worthless in actual discussion; you'll have to talk about reinforcement learning or large language models or diffusion models or your Prolog diary without ever once mentioning the now accurséd term. It unfortunately further separates actual technical discussion and general audience, preventing any layman from actually knowing what the fuck is going on because to them it's all just "AI".

On the other hand and on the topic of language drift, I'm (actually) glad that the English language has (possibly re)gained a universal diminutive participle: -let. No more do you have to say kitten to refer to a small cat, or doe for a small deer. Now you can say catlet, deerlet, doglet, programmerlet, faglet, niggerlet and be understood, albeit with a gigglesnort. It'll just take another generation before it stops sounding ridiculous. And maybe the -oid will also join the ranks.

 

[Jotch]

t. codelet

 

[Vince McMahon]

wokerotting terms is pretty bad, but there is another type of replacement going on too.

• every time i say hacking i have to specify that i mean it in the MIT sense
• memory units have been circumcised to match powers of 10 (kibibyte and such had to be introduced)
• inversion of control is now something your java framework does with your object initialization
• unit test means any kind of test
• artificial intelligence refers to machine learning only and recently even that is narrowing down to LLMs
• processor word now marks 2 bytes because intel said so
• DOS is equivalent with DDOS-ing a server.
• a javascript array is just a vector... or list depending on who you ask, but most definitely not an array

for each of these, thing was publicized about or straight up marketed without context or explanation, then the new meaning gained critical mass and you can no longer express yourself clearly because the meaning others know is a coin-toss.

Subtracting Intel example - that's just a linguistic treadmill. Even technical terms change their intended meaning over time, provided the change hasn't been mandated.

 

[Two Dollars]

Subtracting Intel example - that's just a linguistic treadmill. Even technical terms change their intended meaning over time, provided the change hasn't been mandated.

AI in particular has been changing for decades. It and CPU have always been general terms for “computer-controlled opponent” in video games.

Anyway, YouTube decided at some point that 720p no longer qualifies as HD. Even though 1080p is still “full HD” despite being lower than at least two other commonly-used resolutions.

 

[burntKale]

Genuinely curious, what the fuck did they replaced blacklist/whitelisting to?
Is it the other way around now, where whitelisted people gets banned and blacklisted people gets access?

 

[Kosher Dill]

Genuinely curious, what the fuck did they replaced blacklist/whitelisting to?

"Allowlist/denylist", though mercifully I haven't come across that one in the wild.

 

[Sandshrew]

Someone who has a sperg meltdown over computer terminology should be in a psychiatric institution, rather than working on computers. I have yet to come across anyone who's been converted into being a KKK member solely through using computer terms. Not sure what the realistic concern is over these terms, other than to give HR DEI fags another thing to do.

 

[Free4Ever]

"Lisp is based on lambda calculus" when this applies only to Scheme and derivatives, not to the Lisp language family in general. Lisp isn't originally or fundamentally based on any lambda calculus, there were 17 years of Lisp before Scheme came along.

"Memory safe" for programs That Will Never Pass valgrind because they are memory-incontinent.

 

[Gaysquirt]

big

we should accelerate traditions

View attachment 7260045

yandex is the reason why I strive to achieve at least a basic comprehension level of Russian

 

[Kino Pacino]

Here is an excerpt from the output of the 'git init' command I got when initializing a local git repository today.



They feel inclined to issue a warning -- that the default branch name is scheduled to change if the troons get sufficiently upset -- every time someone executes this command. As a consequence of 'fixing' an entirely innocuous 'problem', they have actually somewhat caused a problem.

Another instance of this retardation is the attempt to replace various documentation referring to either end of the Unix pseudo-terminals as Master/Slave with, for example, Manager/Subsidiary (because that's convenient, right?).

Next they'll attempt to remove the keyword 'class' and class hierarchies from Object Oriented Languages to avoid offending Marxists.

 

[Jotch]

Canary and watchdog is also very offensive to our People of Spirit.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

On the other hand and on the topic of language drift, I'm (actually) glad that the English language has (possibly re)gained a universal diminutive participle: -let. No more do you have to say kitten to refer to a small cat, or doe for a small deer. Now you can say catlet, deerlet, doglet, programmerlet, faglet, niggerlet and be understood, albeit with a gigglesnort. It'll just take another generation before it stops sounding ridiculous. And maybe the -oid will also join the ranks.

Fuck that noise. If someone comes at me with "catlet" or "deerlet," I'm going to assume he's a fucking retard, ESL or not. Just say "baby <animal>" if you don't know.

 

[aerobilly]

"Lisp is based on lambda calculus" when this applies only to Scheme and derivatives, not to the Lisp language family in general. Lisp isn't originally or fundamentally based on any lambda calculus, there were 17 years of Lisp before Scheme came along.

"Memory safe" for programs That Will Never Pass valgrind because they are memory-incontinent.

Neither Lisp nor Scheme are based on lambda calculus. McCarthy was going a different way to Church. ML and Haskell on the other hand are straight-up extensions of the simply typed lambda calculus.

 

[Larvien]

Someone who has a sperg meltdown over computer terminology should be in a psychiatric institution, rather than working on computers. I have yet to come across anyone who's been converted into being a KKK member solely through using computer terms. Not sure what the realistic concern is over these terms, other than to give HR DEI fags another thing to do.

I disagree. Having a full-on meltdown is one thing, sure, but having to navigate between 2 sets of terminology because some white American wants to feel better about themself is an annoyance I shouldn't have.

A recent example from computer engineering I encountered myself: SPI pin definitions. They had changed from the usual MISO/MOSI/SS to SDI/SDO/CS. Older documentation/tutorials/guides use the old names, newer datasheets use the new names. Yes, you eventually get used to it, but why was this necessary?

"No human should be enslaved." It's a computer chip, you dimwit.

 

[Grub]

It's funny because coming from hvac, there's none of this gay shit. Fittings are still male or female, small pieces of prethreaded pipe are nipples and zone controllers and thermostats still use master/slave.

 

[Sandshrew]

I disagree. Having a full-on meltdown is one thing, sure, but having to navigate between 2 sets of terminology because some white American wants to feel better about themself is an annoyance I shouldn't have.

A recent example from computer engineering I encountered myself: SPI pin definitions. They had changed from the usual MISO/MOSI/SS to SDI/SDO/CS. Older documentation/tutorials/guides use the old names, newer datasheets use the new names. Yes, you eventually get used to it, but why was this necessary?

"No human should be enslaved." It's a computer chip, you dimwit.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. I'm making the point that it's stupid to rename things just to be politically correct.

 

[HahaYes]

Virgin repos: Main
Chad repos:


I've seen some of this bullshit at previous workplaces, mostly with white/blacklist being changed to allow/denylist. Nobody ever actually sticks with it nor does anybody who is doing actual work, have the time/patience to change it on our end, it's purely a facade to satiate retarded clients. As soon as any communication with said clients isn't involved it's back to correct terminology

 

[Larvien]

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. I'm making the point that it's stupid to rename things just to be politically correct.

I read it the wrong way, my apologies. (I should sleep)

 

[PeachDream]

artificial intelligence refers to machine learning only and recently even that is narrowing down to LLMs

As someone who toyed with ANNs in c++ a decade+ ago that shit always annoyed me. Why can't people just call them ANNs or LLMs.

As an aside, it's funny how 95% of " AI jobs" or even entire "AI companies" including web- and software devs just do API calls to ChatGPT and probably have no idea how ANNs work at a lower level.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

Each time that i make git repo either for myself or company that i work at i ensure that the master branch is called properly. Fuck communist newspeak.

Software glitches can be lethal:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/mzht1/my_professor_investigated_the_therac25_incident/

Do you think attempting to switch the planet from master to main might have had a death toll? Just about any individual bit of broken code that GitHub tried to force would have had a very tiny risk of killing someone, but they tried to force so many such changes.

• every time i say hacking i have to specify that i mean it in the MIT sense

That might be a lost battle. I think Wittgenstein's "the meaning of a word is its use" applies heavily here.

• artificial intelligence refers to machine learning only and recently even that is narrowing down to LLMs

That's been a problem forever. Tree search algorithms and heuristics like what beat Garry Kasparov don't seem to get called "AI" anymore. I would go as far as to say that a tool like naïve Bayes, which is a machine learning algorithm, isn't necessarily regarded as "AI" anymore.

"Lisp is based on lambda calculus" when this applies only to Scheme and derivatives, not to the Lisp language family in general. Lisp isn't originally or fundamentally based on any lambda calculus, there were 17 years of Lisp before Scheme came along.

Didn't McCarthy explicitly say he based Lisp on the lambda calculus but with some practical concessions? I'll be fine with conceding Scheme or other following works might better achieve that goal.