5 ms·

These are all somewhat sloppy versions of the definitions of these words in common use. “Generic”, “general”, “generalize” and “specific”, “special”, “specify”

These are all somewhat sloppy versions of the definitions of these words in common use. “Generic”, “general”, “generalize” and “specific”, “special”, “specify”, etc. all come from the relation between “species” and “genus”, where genus is a larger category containing a species. The use of these in a programming context is not too far removed from the same usage in non-technical conversation or in (non-biology) technical contexts like philosophy or mathematics. Similarly for “abstract” (meaning idealized or separated from particular cases) and “concrete”, which have been used in logic/philosophy for a long time. Static means unchanging. Void means “empty”, or in a legal context invalid. > why did early teletype use allcaps Because it replaced humans listening to Morse code, which has no lower case. Also, the first primitive keyboards from the mid 19th century used something like piano keys, which take up a ton of space, and even still up through the 1960s data transmission was expensive so people wanted to save every possible bit. You can read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33, etc.

pasabagi 7y ago
>which has no lower case This is exactly what bothers me. Why no lower case? Why not no upper case? You'd need the same number of keys, and it would be more legible. It would use the same amount of space.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Take it up with Émile Baudot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    I feel when something becomes so ubiquitous, even though it's obviously inferior, it takes a bit more push than one patent - especially if the patent is mainly about encoding, and barely incidentally about typography. And I don't think it's the case that nobody knew capitals were hard on the eyes. The whole reason why lower case letters exist is because roman allcapswithnospaces are horrible.
    - jacobolus 7y ago
      The people doing professional book design or handwriting long letters and the people designing systems for transmitting occasional short messages long distances had different priorities. A telegram is a short enough message that being hard to read isn’t really a bottleneck. If it costs a day’s wages to send a couple sentences, the recipient is going to be able to spend a couple minutes on figuring out what it says. People weren’t sending novels around by telegraph.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > And I don't think it's the case that nobody knew capitals were hard on the eyes. The whole reason why lower case letters exist is because roman allcapswithnospaces are horrible. As I responded to you elsewhere, the idea that capitals are hard on the eyes is just a myth. All caps with no spaces is bad, but that's because of the missing spaces.
- toast0 7y ago
  All caps means no ascenders or descenders, so actually less vertical space per line.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    This is a good point, actually. I'm still not sure it works, though - at the lower bounds of visual resolution, are capitals easier to distinguish than cursive letters? Because otherwise, any size capital can be compared to an equivalent box cursive, and I think the capital would be less legible. Perhaps the typically smaller eyes of cursive letters would swing the pendulum the other way, with smeary ink? I think with simply low resolution, cursive would always win out.
- pjc50 7y ago
  The explanation I've always heard was that writing "god" with a lowercase G would have been unacceptable in the 1850s. To a lesser extent, writing personal names without a capital is still seen as a bit odd and potentially an insult.
Stratoscope 7y ago
> Morse code, which has no lower case. Sure, but Morse code doesn't have upper case either. It doesn't have case! It just has one set of letters and numbers and punctuation marks, it doesn't specify what case the letters should be represented in when they are not written in Morse code. In my own case (pun intended) I used to copy Morse code by writing it down in my own weird mix of lowercase letters and semi-cursive writing.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  I’m not sure if the early TTY codes, punch card codes, etc. should be considered to have a case either. It was just the convention to transcribe them using all upper case.

pasabagi 7y ago

>which has no lower case This is exactly what bothers me. Why no lower case? Why not no upper case? You'd need the same number of keys, and it would be more legible. It would use the same amount of space.

jacobolus 7y ago
Take it up with Émile Baudot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I feel when something becomes so ubiquitous, even though it's obviously inferior, it takes a bit more push than one patent - especially if the patent is mainly about encoding, and barely incidentally about typography. And I don't think it's the case that nobody knew capitals were hard on the eyes. The whole reason why lower case letters exist is because roman allcapswithnospaces are horrible.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    The people doing professional book design or handwriting long letters and the people designing systems for transmitting occasional short messages long distances had different priorities. A telegram is a short enough message that being hard to read isn’t really a bottleneck. If it costs a day’s wages to send a couple sentences, the recipient is going to be able to spend a couple minutes on figuring out what it says. People weren’t sending novels around by telegraph.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > And I don't think it's the case that nobody knew capitals were hard on the eyes. The whole reason why lower case letters exist is because roman allcapswithnospaces are horrible. As I responded to you elsewhere, the idea that capitals are hard on the eyes is just a myth. All caps with no spaces is bad, but that's because of the missing spaces.
toast0 7y ago
All caps means no ascenders or descenders, so actually less vertical space per line.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  This is a good point, actually. I'm still not sure it works, though - at the lower bounds of visual resolution, are capitals easier to distinguish than cursive letters? Because otherwise, any size capital can be compared to an equivalent box cursive, and I think the capital would be less legible. Perhaps the typically smaller eyes of cursive letters would swing the pendulum the other way, with smeary ink? I think with simply low resolution, cursive would always win out.
pjc50 7y ago
The explanation I've always heard was that writing "god" with a lowercase G would have been unacceptable in the 1850s. To a lesser extent, writing personal names without a capital is still seen as a bit odd and potentially an insult.

Stratoscope 7y ago

> Morse code, which has no lower case. Sure, but Morse code doesn't have upper case either. It doesn't have case! It just has one set of letters and numbers and punctuation marks, it doesn't specify what case the letters should be represented in when they are not written in Morse code. In my own case (pun intended) I used to copy Morse code by writing it down in my own weird mix of lowercase letters and semi-cursive writing.

jacobolus 7y ago
I’m not sure if the early TTY codes, punch card codes, etc. should be considered to have a case either. It was just the convention to transcribe them using all upper case.