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Words take on new, unintended, and incorrect meanings all the time. It's how language works. When someone says "isomorphic JS" I know exactly what they are tal

Words take on new, unintended, and incorrect meanings all the time. It's how language works. When someone says "isomorphic JS" I know exactly what they are talking about. I understand why some people might push back against it, but there's nothing wrong with the term.

aikah 11y ago
> Words take on new, unintended, and incorrect meanings all the time. It's how language works. No, that's how marketing works. We are developers not salesmen. and as computer scientists respecting other science branches is a duty. Using the expression "isomorphic" in that context is just confusing. And it makes developers sound like they haven't a fn clue what they are talking about.
- lol_haha 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_languag... might be a good starting point.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  We are developers not salesmen Speak for yourself. Some of us are both. and as computer scientists respecting other science branches is a duty. Using the expression "isomorphic" in that context is just confusing. That's a fair point, but "context" is the key word. Using "isomorphic" incorrectly in a mathematical context would be one thing. But borrowing the word to use in a largely unrelated context seems fine to me. And it isn't like this is the first time a word has been borrowed and used to mean something "similar or related, but not quite the same". I'm pretty sure this has even happened inside other scientific disciplines, although I'll grant you that I don't have an example at my fingertips.
  - reinhardt 11y ago
    I would be more sympathetic if they had "borrowed" (more like appropriated) a term from, say, biology or french literature, but mathematics is not exactly a "largely unrelated context" from programming, even if it's JS that we're talking about. What's next, abusing "binomial" to mean "binary"?
dukerutledge 11y ago
"Being abstract is something profoundly different from being vague … The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise." -Dikstra When you overload an existing term you make it more vague, thus destroying the precision of an abstraction.

aikah 11y ago

> Words take on new, unintended, and incorrect meanings all the time. It's how language works. No, that's how marketing works. We are developers not salesmen. and as computer scientists respecting other science branches is a duty. Using the expression "isomorphic" in that context is just confusing. And it makes developers sound like they haven't a fn clue what they are talking about.

lol_haha 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_languag... might be a good starting point.
mindcrime 11y ago
We are developers not salesmen Speak for yourself. Some of us are both. and as computer scientists respecting other science branches is a duty. Using the expression "isomorphic" in that context is just confusing. That's a fair point, but "context" is the key word. Using "isomorphic" incorrectly in a mathematical context would be one thing. But borrowing the word to use in a largely unrelated context seems fine to me. And it isn't like this is the first time a word has been borrowed and used to mean something "similar or related, but not quite the same". I'm pretty sure this has even happened inside other scientific disciplines, although I'll grant you that I don't have an example at my fingertips.
- reinhardt 11y ago
  I would be more sympathetic if they had "borrowed" (more like appropriated) a term from, say, biology or french literature, but mathematics is not exactly a "largely unrelated context" from programming, even if it's JS that we're talking about. What's next, abusing "binomial" to mean "binary"?

dukerutledge 11y ago

"Being abstract is something profoundly different from being vague … The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise." -Dikstra When you overload an existing term you make it more vague, thus destroying the precision of an abstraction.