5 ms·
Performant: still not a word.
by thrownaway2424 11y ago
Performant: still not a word.
- ralusek 11y agoHow do you think new words came about?
- Scramblejams 11y agoBy ignoring perfectly good legitimate alternatives and instead inventing words in an effort to make the speaker sound smarter than the listener, of course.
- ape4 11y agoeg "faster"
- mikeash 11y agoSee also: "utilize" instead of "use."
- ape4 11y agoBrits use "whilst" instead of "while". Thank god they didn't pick the keywords of any programming languages. utilise namespace std; whilst (performant()) { pontificate(); } Edit: bonus `problematic` operator for exceptions.
- mikeash 11y agoI don't know, I think a "whilst loop" would be kind of charming.
- ape4 11y agoIt could mean while-stop or something?!
- lmm 11y agoUtilise is an americanism, we don't use it in Britain (and when I first heard "burglarize" I thought it was a joke). I suspect performant is the same. Whilst implies parallelism/concurrency, it's not the same thing as while. Problematic is more a tumblrism than anything else.
- yongjik 11y agoActually, "fast" doesn't mean "performant" (OK, maybe that's not a word, in which case I mean "having high performance"), unless you want to also say "speed" means "performance". Also "utilize" is more specific than "use": it implies "using for a desirable purpose". Consider: (1) This daemon process is utilizing all the available bandwidth. (2) This daemon process is using all the available bandwidth. Sometimes people making up new words do come across as lazy, but you can easily go too far in the other direction, too.
- mikeash 11y agoI have no idea what difference is implied between (1) and (2) there. What's the difference between speed and performance here?
- datadata 11y ago(1) The bandwidth is being entirely consumed. It is all needed and the process is performing nominally. (2) The bandwidth is being entirely consumed, but it might only be because the process is misbehaving and consuming more bandwidth than necessary. Speed only translates to performance if the resource being quickly consumed is actually needed. Example-- a game might always use all CPU cycles, but only when rendering the most challenging scene is reaching peak performance.
- mikeash 11y agoIs that difference how people would actually understand the word? I've never (knowingly) heard it used like that. Certainly terms like "CPU utilization" and "network utilization" are frequently used to denote a simple use-divided-by-capacity ratio. For your game example, I don't see what isn't encompassed by "speed" (how many FPS you get out) or "efficiency" (how much CPU/GPU you use to do it).
- pklausler 11y agoSeymour Cray never said "performant". Engineers say "fast" or "fast enough". Marketing types and nontechnical management seem to prefer this neologism. But it might also be a generational thing. A new coinage that I noticed in the past year that also grates on my ears: "learning" as a substitute for "lesson", as in "what were your learnings from the hackathon?" Anyone else caught this one?
- windowsworkstoo 11y agoPast year? Past decade champ.
- pshc 11y agoMaybe in Microsoft-land or certain circles, but anecdotally I've only started hearing "learnings" this year too.
- douche 11y ago"Learnings" sounds like either a Hinglish expression, or maybe Microspeak to my ears.
- Agathos 11y agoYeah, to my ears it sounds like someone is anxious that he won't be taken seriously if he uses a one-syllable word.
- Scramblejams 11y agoAlso noticed it several years ago. I may be wrong but to me it seems to have arrived from the same group that's imposed corporate-speak on boardrooms everywhere, including high-profile retreadings of words like synergy and paradigm.
- hadagribble 11y ago(One of the authors here) This is by far my favourite post in this entire thread -- I don't think I've ever seen Seymour Cray referenced as an authority in this manner before :) Not specifically to OP, but for everyone unhappy about the use of performant: Pretty happy to concede that it isn't our finest bit of writing. Pretentiousness? Lack of technical nous? A bit of hurried/careless wording? I'll let you folks decide...
- carapace 11y agoThis word is one of my pet peeves as well. "Performant" is an ignorant and foolish way to say "high performance". It's like saying "voltant" instead of "high voltage". I'm all for coining new words that mean new things, but when someone says "performant" I treat it as a clue that they might be a sloppy thinker.
- Agathos 11y ago"Performance" sounds like sloppy thinking too. What kind of performance are we talking about? Latency, throughput, false positive rate, false negative rate, click through rate, conversion to sales rate? There are a lot of axes on which to measure performance.
- scott_s 11y agoI don't like "performant" as a word, but I also recognize that is an irrational, emotional reaction on my part. I think it's valid to create an adjective that basically means "a thing that has high or acceptable performance". I see no reason to conclude people who use it are sloppy thinkers.
- carapace 11y agoWell, I don't conclude that, just begin to suspect it. But you're right, it's pretty irrational. ;-)
- mc808 11y agoNo, it's more like the wealth of other adjectives that follow the pattern of "having/with -ance" -> "-ant". Important, significant, brilliant, vigilant, cognizant, dissonant, exuberant, invariant, radiant, elegant, abundant, ... I suppose you could say that someone using just about any of those words is trying to sound smart or overly formal, and so we should deny their status as words to bring the speakers down a notch.
- pc2g4d 11y ago"conformant" seems like the strongest analogy.
- cjensen 11y agoThis is the worst use of the neologism I've yet seen: (1) It's not perfectly clear what the definition is in this particular context. Usually the word is used to indicate "our stuff is rad fast bro" implying that speed is obtained through cleverness such as the use of efficient code or an efficiently scalable architecture, but the linked article violates this definition by comparing apples (CPUs) and oranges (storage). It's nonsensical in the manner of "my word processor is more performant than my fractal renderer". (2) Normally, use of this neologism saves time by replacing a long phrase. This use in the linked article is backwards: the word "faster" could have been used in place of the longer "more performant."
- andrewbinstock 11y agoA by-product of "high-performance" being coopted a long time ago by "high-performance computing." Seems to me to be a natural part of the evolution of technology.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dmourati 11y agoThank you.
- bsaul 11y agoNot sure it'd explain the origin of the use of this word in english, but performant is a french word that is very often used in this context.