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My pet peeve on HN is people writing comments like they're gonna be peer reviewed. Either the less common words that they use are obviously out of place like so

by _tulpa 9y ago

My pet peeve on HN is people writing comments like they're gonna be peer reviewed. Either the less common words that they use are obviously out of place like someone just discovered a thesaurus (conflated is my favourite example), or it's consistently formal and quasi-academic so I have to put extra effort into reading it. Either way it just makes the authour sound like a pretentions wanker.

mythrwy 9y ago
Yep. "Orthogonal" is one of my favorites. Along with "order of magnitude".
- sincerely 9y ago
  “order of magnitude” is a pretty useful concept, to be fair.
  - combatentropy 9y ago
    But it's twice as long as saying "ten times." "The server is an order of magnitude faster than our old one." "The server is 10 times faster than our old one." -- More often heard: "The server is an order of magnitude more performant than our legacy server."
- milesvp 9y ago
  Yeah, except orthogonal has a very precise meaning in mathematics, there is no other word that can be used to replace it when describing a multidimensional vector that is perpendicular to every other vector. This is a very important feature in that it means the vector can be modified and it won't impact any other vectors. You probably hear it a lot, because it's generally important to make functions orthogonal with respect to each other so they may be modified without effecting one another. I'll agree that order of magnitude is starting to feel like it's overused as rhetoric in programming circles, even though it too is a very important concept in engineering.
kilburn 9y ago
As a non-native english speaker trained in academia, I'm pretty sure that sometimes my comments must come out like that. I'm not doing it on purpose, it's just that I don't know better! I suspect there are many others in my situation here, specially those whose native language is of latin origin, because latin-based words are considered more formal/academic in english, yet they're much easier for us to learn! Just keep that in mind when judging other's comments please ;)
- _tulpa 9y ago
  Non native english usually just has a few weird word choices as opposed to a really formal and replacing common words with much less common ones that mean roughly the same thing. I'm talking about comments that my younger self would have written when I thought I would add weight to my argument by trying to sound smarter (so I'd be a hypocrite to judge comments harshly anyway).
majewsky 9y ago
> My pet peeve on HN is people writing comments like they're gonna be peer reviewed. I consider myself guilty of doing this, but that's because (most of the time) I actually proof-read my comments before posting them, and consider whether they provide a useful addition to the discussion. If one of my comments look like they're going to be peer-reviewed, it's because they're self-reviewed, and you don't get to see the long tail of comments that I typed out and then deleted because a) they didn't add anything useful to the discussion or b) I could not express my thoughts clearly enough.
- _tulpa 9y ago
  I'm talking more about how many unnecessary words I have to read than about clarity or contributing to the discussion. You could've written something like this instead: I'm guilty of this, but that's because I self-review and consider whether I'm actually contributing to the discussion before posting. You don't get to see vast majority of un-submitted comments because they either didn't add anything useful or they weren't clear enough. Same message, but much easier to read.

by _tulpa 9y ago

mythrwy 9y ago

Yep. "Orthogonal" is one of my favorites. Along with "order of magnitude".

sincerely 9y ago
“order of magnitude” is a pretty useful concept, to be fair.
- combatentropy 9y ago
  But it's twice as long as saying "ten times." "The server is an order of magnitude faster than our old one." "The server is 10 times faster than our old one." -- More often heard: "The server is an order of magnitude more performant than our legacy server."
milesvp 9y ago
Yeah, except orthogonal has a very precise meaning in mathematics, there is no other word that can be used to replace it when describing a multidimensional vector that is perpendicular to every other vector. This is a very important feature in that it means the vector can be modified and it won't impact any other vectors. You probably hear it a lot, because it's generally important to make functions orthogonal with respect to each other so they may be modified without effecting one another. I'll agree that order of magnitude is starting to feel like it's overused as rhetoric in programming circles, even though it too is a very important concept in engineering.

kilburn 9y ago

As a non-native english speaker trained in academia, I'm pretty sure that sometimes my comments must come out like that. I'm not doing it on purpose, it's just that I don't know better! I suspect there are many others in my situation here, specially those whose native language is of latin origin, because latin-based words are considered more formal/academic in english, yet they're much easier for us to learn! Just keep that in mind when judging other's comments please ;)

_tulpa 9y ago
Non native english usually just has a few weird word choices as opposed to a really formal and replacing common words with much less common ones that mean roughly the same thing. I'm talking about comments that my younger self would have written when I thought I would add weight to my argument by trying to sound smarter (so I'd be a hypocrite to judge comments harshly anyway).

majewsky 9y ago

> My pet peeve on HN is people writing comments like they're gonna be peer reviewed. I consider myself guilty of doing this, but that's because (most of the time) I actually proof-read my comments before posting them, and consider whether they provide a useful addition to the discussion. If one of my comments look like they're going to be peer-reviewed, it's because they're self-reviewed, and you don't get to see the long tail of comments that I typed out and then deleted because a) they didn't add anything useful to the discussion or b) I could not express my thoughts clearly enough.

_tulpa 9y ago
I'm talking more about how many unnecessary words I have to read than about clarity or contributing to the discussion. You could've written something like this instead: I'm guilty of this, but that's because I self-review and consider whether I'm actually contributing to the discussion before posting. You don't get to see vast majority of un-submitted comments because they either didn't add anything useful or they weren't clear enough. Same message, but much easier to read.