10 ms·
Unsuck It (2010)
- tyingq 6y agoI imagine our pointy-haired bosses would appreciate an "unsuck it" for tech jargon, with stuff like: orthagonal -> unrelated immutable -> unchangeable idempotent -> (is there a very short phrase that works here?)
- entropicdrifter 6y agoidempotent -> one-and-done ? It's kinda hard to summarize
- zodiakzz 6y agotransparent -> opaque
- chrisweekly 6y agoidempotent -> side-effect-free? safely-repeatable?
- tyingq 6y agoAh, that's helpful. "Safely repeatable, with no side effects" will be my new answer if anyone asks.
- chrisweekly 6y agoWell, per others' responses the "no side effects" part is not quite accurate. The definition in plain English is actually pretty simple: idempotency = "has the same effect, no matter how many times it's run". Like a dedicated "Power On" button (vs a "power toggle" button).
- marcosdumay 6y ago> side-effect-free Hum... No, that's not the meaning at all. > safely-repeatable And now you'll get stuck explaining exactly what "safe" means.
- jolmg 6y ago> side-effect-free? No, those are pure. A pure, idempotent function would be one where f(f(x)) = f(x). An idempotent function could have side-effects. Imagine turn_on() where if it's already on, then nothing happens and it just stays on.
- tyingq 6y agoI think there's two different readings of "side effect free" here. The fact that nothing happens on the second+ invocation is, for me, the example of no unwanted side effects. An unwanted side effect might be sending more voltage down the line on each invocation...120, 240, 360.
- jolmg 6y agoSide-effect is a very well-established term, though[1]: > In computer science, an operation, function or expression is said to have a side effect if it modifies some state variable value(s) outside its local environment, that is to say has an observable effect besides returning a value (the main effect) to the invoker of the operation. > The fact that nothing happens on the second+ invocation is, for me, the example of no unwanted side effects. I don't think you'll ever find a definition that says something about second invocations. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_effect_(computer_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_effect_(computer_science)
- chrisweekly 6y agoQuite right. How about "same-result-returning"?
- jolmg 6y ago"same-result-returning" sounds like pure functions which return the same result when given the same arguments. I prefer entropicdrifter's "one-and-done".
- astrea 6y agoThose aren't even jargon, they're just words a well-educated person would know.
- reaperducer 6y agoIt's not about education or vocabulary. It's about using words to make yourself sound important, when you're not. The problem is that people who don't have a good vocabulary abuse these words and change their meaning for self-serving purposes, and not to communicate.
- astrea 6y agoPerhaps that's just projections of your own insecurities and those words are just simply what come to mind for them or find the most descriptive.
- reaperducer 6y agoPerhaps that's just projections of your own insecurities and those words are just simply what come to mind for them or find the most descriptive. No, it's because I have a degree is Communication, and understand the importance of language in the workplace. Any "insecurity" is just defensiveness on your part. Or, to put it in language you might understand: "Troll harder, n00b."
- imwillofficial 6y agoOoooh the guy with the degree in communications has decided what is useful and what is over the top in regards to mid tier vocabulary usage. I think you’ve missed the point of this whole website my friend.
- astrea 6y agoI'm merely saying that if someone using "orthogonal" in a sentence seems pretentious to you, then perhaps you're the issue.
- 6y ago
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago"Hey, you're an idempotent kind of person: all I need to know about you I learned on day 1, and nothing's changed since then." /s
- lotsofpulp 6y agoDoes this work too? "Hey, you're an idempotent kind of person: all you think you need to know about me you learned on day 1, and nothing's changed since then."
- gherkinnn 6y agoGot me. But I like to think that using precise technical terms such as "idempotent" is perfectly fine. "Immutable", works as well, since you have "mutable", and "mutation" to go with it. Both also carry a lot of contextual information that make them hard to replace. (There has to be a proper linguistic term to describe these properties) "Touch base" is none of those things. Ever.
- chousuke 6y agoYou could replace orthogonal and immutable perhaps, but idempotency has a rather precise technical definition that doesn't really have any synonyms. It's a useful word too, because idempotency is generally a very desirable property to have in many systems. If you do any kind of system automation, it would get quite cumbersome if you had to keep talking about operations which only effect change when they actually need to.
- Twisol 6y agoHm. "Safely repeatable"? Idempotence is a pretty specific concept.
- seph-reed 6y agoIdempotent -> singularly consistent It's not a perfect definition, but I don't think execs really need to know what idempotent is.
- NoodleIncident 6y agoI like that orthagonal suggests that they definitely intersect, but go in two different directions. Unrelated is too harsh in most of the situations you'd use orthagonal.
- tyingq 6y agoAh, yeah, that's true. Though some developers use it without that context to really just mean "unrelated".
- marcosdumay 6y agoWell, orthogonal lines don't have to intersect in in geometry (you just need more than 2 dimensions), and "intersect" is meaningless in algebra. So, I don't think that's really implied.
- NoodleIncident 6y agoCriticizing jargon in the field of programming because it's not used in exactly the same sense as when it's jargon in mathematics is.. weird.
- bohrasd 6y agoidempotent -> same same, but different
- musicale 6y agoperformant -> fast enough is already there :)
- fbelzile 6y agoThis is awesome. It has my favorite one: "ping me" Man, I hated hearing this. Just use normal words, please.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y agoYeah, normal words like "reaching out" (said the way Neil Diamond says it, with some seriousness and a straight face). It turns professional life into melodrama.
- fbelzile 6y agoOr just, email me when... or call me when... At least it gives me a hint about the best way to contact you about something.
- wiml 6y ago"ping me" does have a useful connotation, though, like "touch base" or "give a heads-up" it suggests a pretty minimal communication, just to let someone know that something has or will occur. Making a distinction between a short notice that can be followed up on if needed, vs. a more detailed memo or report.
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoI used to hate all that nonsense, then at some point in the last 15 years I got assimilated. Though, I still can't understand anything an executive says.
- jasonv 6y agoI don't mind that one, but "rockstar" in job descriptions drives me batty. As do "send it" and "stan". So, it's across all cultural borders these days.
- ficklepickle 6y agoOK boomer. I'm stanning so hard I'm just gonna send it, fam. Just kidding. I'm old too. Get off my lawn, unless you are playing lawn darts.
- dylan604 6y agoClicked on browse, and then read the first term for 'above the fold'. pure gold Unsucked: The mystical location on websites where advertisers want their ads to appear. Originally referred to physical newspapers, which folded in half and made money from advertising. Today, newspapers don’t have advertisers and just fold.
- tyingq 6y agoI know I'm venturing off-topic here, but I believe "above the fold" in the newspaper world referred to story prominence on the front page rather than advertising. I don't recall, even long ago, seeing ads on real newspapers that were both front-page and "above the fold". I imagine "above the fold" wasn't related to advertising until the web existed.
- exmadscientist 6y agoAround here they did exist, but were not so prominent, usually in a sidebar or topbar format. I think they were more common on slow news days, which both does and doesn't make sense. They became more common overall as newspapers declined; how prominent they are now, I don't know, because the dead tree edition isn't worth reading anymore.
- troyvit 6y agoWhen I studied journalism in the early '90s our professors drew a direct correlation between newspapers that showed ads "above the fold" and those that didn't. According to the profs if they practiced the former they were clearly not real journalistic enterprises. USA Today did it and they used it as a case that proved their point. How times change.
- shawn-furyan 6y agoWould that it were so simple to assess the value and integrity of individual voices vying for attention among the roaring cacophony that is the internet.
- tyingq 6y ago
- danieldrehmer 6y agoGPT-3?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 6y agoIf you stump it, you get: "Well, tickle my taint. That one hasn’t come up yet. Not to worry. We’re on it."
- jihadjihad 6y agoIt really jibes with the site's logo
- culopatin 6y agoIm having fun browsing it but it is one of the slowest sites I’ve actually waited for to load.
- DonHopkins 6y agoAs snarky as a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com https://web.archive.org/web/20181215003853/http://www.suck.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181215003853/http://www.suck.c...
- phildenhoff 6y agoSeeing all the phrases my old colleagues used has really solidified that leaving consulting was a good choice for my own sanity. Stop trying to ping me on a go-forward basis to utilize and action upcoming synergies in a fulsome manner!
- Jtsummers 6y agoMy desk at an old job was adjacent to the desk of the woman in charge of a safety process (some variant of 5S and something else, I think). Every week there'd be a small gathering at her desk including a couple managers and people from some other departments (not sure what their roles were otherwise, the managers I knew were a few levels above me in engineering). I heard nearly every buzzword bingo term during those meetings. I swore off the idea of every becoming any kind of manager after that. Fast forward a decade, I'm pissed off with how things aren't working and aren't changing so I opt myself into a management adjacent position ("process improvement"). I ended up in many, many more management meetings than I ever want to and learned that there were still more buzzword bingo words for me to learn! I escaped after a time because I realized that they were just playing a convoluted drinking game (I think if you say or hear "synergy" 1000 times it's guaranteed to make you an alcoholic, but the drinks are after hours instead of when the game is played).
- imwillofficial 6y ago::in a drunken haze:: “Circle back to that!” “We faced challenges!” “Synergize our core competencies!” ::passes out::
- dsr_ 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4 (Weird Al Yankovic: Mission Statement) First verse: We must all efficiently Operationalize our strategies Invest in world-class technology And leverage our core competencies
- imwillofficial 6y ago
- jessriedel 6y agoDoesn't the phrase "add color" go back at least to the century-old idea of a "color" commentator (who operates opposite the "play-by-play" commentator) of sports radio and later sports TV? I'd be pretty surprised if this wasn't used for things outside of sports before MBAs started using. And if the MBAs invented the turn of phrase, I'd say it's clever and evocative! This seems very different than mere business euphemism like "realize negative gains".
- CyanBird 6y agoThat's interesting, I had never heard the term being used in English, but in Chile it is a very commonly used term "darle color" is synonym to exaggerate something I do wonder if they arose in the same way, from color commentators
- kps 6y agoI am disappointed that ‘actionable’ doesn't present the original meaning — providing cause to take legal action — given how well it typically fits corpspeak in place of the intended one.
- ryandrake 6y agoThe one all the cool-kid execs are using these days is "lean in to" as a replacement for the boring "focus on". As in "We're going to be leaning in to Cloud and Chat Apps this quarter in order to grow our investment into execution and innovation..."
- bussierem 6y agoThis reminds me of https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/ https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/
- gherkinnn 6y agoIt's not necessarily the words themselves, but the type of person who is associated with them. And I hate it when a word I like gets appropriated by unlikable people. "Touch base" and "Bio break" are an exception. Makes me squeal every time, no matter who uses them.
- mirkules 6y ago> Illegal Alien: person. This is like saying “another word for car is ‘vehicle’”. It’s not the same thing. Maybe it’s an outdated expression, but it still signifies a person who crossed a country’s border illegally and does not have legal status. Maybe in some libertarian circles where there ideologically are no such things as borders this would be true, but the world exists, countries exist, laws exist and changing words to suit an ideology instead of facts is kind of silly. P.S. I got to “Illegal Alien” by entering “Synergy” then following along.
- Jtsummers 6y ago> Maybe it’s an outdated expression, but it still signifies a person who crossed a country’s border illegally and does not have legal status. Actually, it doesn't even mean just that, that's just the popular perception. Anyone not present legally would be an illegal alien, even if they crossed the border legally. I knew many international students who became illegal aliens due to overstaying their visas or who violated their visa in some way through work they did.
- dang 6y agoDiscussed at the time: Unsuck It - translate business jargon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600102 - Aug 2010 (23 comments)
- techbio 6y agoAn update on the model of Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/972/972-h/972-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/972/972-h/972-h.htm
- yesenadam 6y agoDon Watson's Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words: Contemporary Cliches, Cant and Management Jargon (2004) seems very similar in tone to Unsuck It. It has political and corporate-speak, with real-world examples! The best part is the biblical/Shakespeare/traditional sayings with the weasel words substituted. So funny. (He wrote another, Worst Words: A compendium of contemporary cant, gibberish and jargon (2015) which I haven't seen but guess is similar)
- fullstackchris 6y agoShamelessy perused my most recent side project to see if I had any of this language on my pages. Luckily none such words were found!
- neatwithatwist 6y agoI still use this site occasionally. Used it way more when I worked in Consulting. Has actually been useful.
- piinbinary 6y agoThis one is great: > counterintuitive > Based on facts or evidence, rather than on magic-gut divination.
- ketamine__ 6y agoWe need to get "in good faith" on here.