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I think the idea is that if enough of us push back, then people will stop using that term. After all, "the industry" is made up of people whose minds we can att

I think the idea is that if enough of us push back, then people will stop using that term. After all, "the industry" is made up of people whose minds we can attempt to change.

kentonv 6y ago
And I'm telling you that idea is not remotely realistic. Sorry.
- recursive 6y ago
  Then it's similarly unrealistic to expect that some fraction of people who are familiar with English won't continue to complain about it.
pdimitar 6y ago
The "industry" is comprised of much more than techies -- there are millions of marketing people out there who get hyped up at the shallowest sounding buzzword and we absolutely never will out-shout them. Nor do customers who love buzzwords.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Buzzwords can be fickle things. “Wireless” used to mean radio. Who calls the internet “the information superhighway” anymore? “Computer” used to be a job title. How many job ads capitalise “PC/MAC” even though it’s a contraction of Macintosh and not an initialism like Personal Computer is? The first “tablet” I bought was a Wacom — an accessory, not a computer in its own right. When did we stop calling pocket computers “PDAs”?
  - recursive 6y ago
    "Digital" used to mean something that related to fingers or toes. Then it meant "electronic". Now it means "distributed via network instead of physical medium", even though it's the first "D" in "DVD".
- kentonv 6y ago
  It's not just marketers. The vast majority of engineers are just fine with this term. The set of people complaining about it are a tiny minority. I'm the lead engineer on Cloudflare Workers. We didn't originally call it "serverless", but after talking to lots of engineers who said "Oh so it's serverless?" we decided to go with that term. The decision was not made by marketers.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    So network effects. And the other engineers already bought the marketing term and are implicitly pressuring you into using it. Ouch.
    - kentonv 6y ago
      There's nothing "ouch" about it. People understand a term to mean a thing, we are doing that thing, we adopt the same term, now everyone understands what we're doing. Communication is good.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        Well, I agree on that. But I do get sad sometimes about how easily influenced the people at large are.

I think the idea is that if enough of us push back, then people will stop using that term. After all, "the industry" is made up of people whose minds we can attempt to change.

kentonv 6y ago

And I'm telling you that idea is not remotely realistic. Sorry.

recursive 6y ago
Then it's similarly unrealistic to expect that some fraction of people who are familiar with English won't continue to complain about it.

pdimitar 6y ago

The "industry" is comprised of much more than techies -- there are millions of marketing people out there who get hyped up at the shallowest sounding buzzword and we absolutely never will out-shout them. Nor do customers who love buzzwords.

ben_w 6y ago
Buzzwords can be fickle things. “Wireless” used to mean radio. Who calls the internet “the information superhighway” anymore? “Computer” used to be a job title. How many job ads capitalise “PC/MAC” even though it’s a contraction of Macintosh and not an initialism like Personal Computer is? The first “tablet” I bought was a Wacom — an accessory, not a computer in its own right. When did we stop calling pocket computers “PDAs”?
- recursive 6y ago
  "Digital" used to mean something that related to fingers or toes. Then it meant "electronic". Now it means "distributed via network instead of physical medium", even though it's the first "D" in "DVD".
kentonv 6y ago
It's not just marketers. The vast majority of engineers are just fine with this term. The set of people complaining about it are a tiny minority. I'm the lead engineer on Cloudflare Workers. We didn't originally call it "serverless", but after talking to lots of engineers who said "Oh so it's serverless?" we decided to go with that term. The decision was not made by marketers.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  So network effects. And the other engineers already bought the marketing term and are implicitly pressuring you into using it. Ouch.
  - kentonv 6y ago
    There's nothing "ouch" about it. People understand a term to mean a thing, we are doing that thing, we adopt the same term, now everyone understands what we're doing. Communication is good.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Well, I agree on that. But I do get sad sometimes about how easily influenced the people at large are.