5 ms·

a) This site is very hard to navigate; on mobile the text jumps around whenever you touch and it's usually cut off past the edge of the screen b) I couldn't fi

by _bxg1 6y ago

a) This site is very hard to navigate; on mobile the text jumps around whenever you touch and it's usually cut off past the edge of the screen b) I couldn't figure out what this is. At first I thought it was computer graphics rendering (what "CGI" usually means), but after skimming several paragraphs I don't think that's what it is? But I'm still not sure. c) Clicking the github link tries to download a .zip, which beyond making it harder to figure out what this is, was mildly distressing. Edit: re: the downvotes, presumably the author would want to know that their site is broken on mobile and that the content is inaccessible to the average reader who might be curious to learn about it, in ways that could be easily remedied.

Animats 6y ago
It's about the Lambda product of Amazon Web Services. No relation to Church's lambda calculus or lambda constructs in programming. The article does not make that clear at all. (One of the privileges of being a really big company is that you can name your products using common terms and take over that term. Like, "Windows". Even though Sun used that first.)
- _bxg1 6y ago
  I did actually follow the "Lambda" portion of it, for what it's worth
bdcravens 6y ago
I think your downvotes are for your comment about CGI; while the term is ambiguous, in the context of serving the web it refers to Common Gateway Interface, the original method for serving anything other than static files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface For many HNers, this is an understood term.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that acronyms in general be expanded towards the top, especially when there's a commonly-known overload in the same general subject area. Personally, I've been working in the field for six years and studied in it for six years before that, and I'm pretty sure I've never heard that term. Simply writing out the full phrase "Common Gateway Interface" would a) tell me it's not what I thought, and b) give me something to google so I can learn about the subject and/or decide if I'm interested in continuing to read.
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    There's some advantage to abbreviations/acronyms (since titles have a length limit), but in general, I agree. I propose the first place we start is to agree that "crypto" doesn't always mean "cryptocurrency" :-)
  - catalogia 6y ago
    If you don't already know what 'CGI' means in this context, I'm skeptical that "Common Gateway Interface" would actually resolve much confusion.
    - _bxg1 6y ago
      It would tell me that it doesn't have to do with graphics, and that it probably has to do with networking. That's a whole lot more than is made clear as it is.

by _bxg1 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

It's about the Lambda product of Amazon Web Services. No relation to Church's lambda calculus or lambda constructs in programming. The article does not make that clear at all. (One of the privileges of being a really big company is that you can name your products using common terms and take over that term. Like, "Windows". Even though Sun used that first.)

_bxg1 6y ago
I did actually follow the "Lambda" portion of it, for what it's worth

bdcravens 6y ago

I think your downvotes are for your comment about CGI; while the term is ambiguous, in the context of serving the web it refers to Common Gateway Interface, the original method for serving anything other than static files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface For many HNers, this is an understood term.

_bxg1 6y ago
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that acronyms in general be expanded towards the top, especially when there's a commonly-known overload in the same general subject area. Personally, I've been working in the field for six years and studied in it for six years before that, and I'm pretty sure I've never heard that term. Simply writing out the full phrase "Common Gateway Interface" would a) tell me it's not what I thought, and b) give me something to google so I can learn about the subject and/or decide if I'm interested in continuing to read.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  There's some advantage to abbreviations/acronyms (since titles have a length limit), but in general, I agree. I propose the first place we start is to agree that "crypto" doesn't always mean "cryptocurrency" :-)
- catalogia 6y ago
  If you don't already know what 'CGI' means in this context, I'm skeptical that "Common Gateway Interface" would actually resolve much confusion.
  - _bxg1 6y ago
    It would tell me that it doesn't have to do with graphics, and that it probably has to do with networking. That's a whole lot more than is made clear as it is.