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I knew an older programmer who used the phrase "parasitic interpretation" to describe the human tendency to assume a things' name related to its function. This

I knew an older programmer who used the phrase "parasitic interpretation" to describe the human tendency to assume a things' name related to its function. This is the idea that something called `loop_index` is the index for a loop, when it could actually be anything. He strongly felt that semantic content in variable names should be minimized. I haven't run into the phrase anywhere else, and Google doesn't turn up any programming-related results that I can tell, but I've found the idea endlessly useful. In talking about programs and the goal of programs, we often use language that describes things we have not yet been able to construct. The language has a parasitic relationship to the thing it names - misdirecting our understanding of the machine it sits on. I try to practice a lot of skepticism around language and computers. It is very easy to name a thing and much harder to make the machine behave in the way the language suggests.

bonoboTP 6y ago
You may like the article "Troubling Trends in Machine Learning Scholarship", Lipton & Steinhardt, 2018 https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03341 https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03341 Especially the trend of "misuse of language, e.g., by choosing terms of art with colloquial connotations or by overloading established technical terms"
qsort 6y ago
Yeah, this is an interesting take. Broadly speaking I agree, but you have to be pragmatic about that. There exist some accepted conventions it's just senseless to break just to make a point, for example, if you are defining a ring, making + distributive over \* rather than the opposite as is usual is not inherently wrong, but I would classify that as bad notation. Similarly in OOP, you could technically name getters in any way you want, but why would you not conform to the accepted "getValue()" standard? Of course fooling yourself into thinking you have achieved things you actually haven't by clever usage of natural language is the opposite end of the spectrum, and it's exactly what I was ranting against. I guess "skepticism" is the correct word, indeed.

bonoboTP 6y ago

You may like the article "Troubling Trends in Machine Learning Scholarship", Lipton & Steinhardt, 2018 https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03341 https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03341 Especially the trend of "misuse of language, e.g., by choosing terms of art with colloquial connotations or by overloading established technical terms"

qsort 6y ago

Yeah, this is an interesting take. Broadly speaking I agree, but you have to be pragmatic about that. There exist some accepted conventions it's just senseless to break just to make a point, for example, if you are defining a ring, making + distributive over \* rather than the opposite as is usual is not inherently wrong, but I would classify that as bad notation. Similarly in OOP, you could technically name getters in any way you want, but why would you not conform to the accepted "getValue()" standard? Of course fooling yourself into thinking you have achieved things you actually haven't by clever usage of natural language is the opposite end of the spectrum, and it's exactly what I was ranting against. I guess "skepticism" is the correct word, indeed.