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I see the benefit of standardizing some language across documentation, but I feel a lot of politically charged items were also taken out which ironically make s
by ramblerman 6y ago
I see the benefit of standardizing some language across documentation, but I feel a lot of politically charged items were also taken out which ironically make some things harder to understand, as they are just so commonplace.
> fat client : don't use fat
> the process is hanging : don't use hang/hung
> dummy variable : don't use dumb
> we treat this client as a first-class citizen : don't use first-class citizen
> DMZ : use a more precise term like perimeter network.
> DLQ : use unprocessed messages queue
> whitelist/blacklist : use deny list or allow list
> blackbox : use opaque-box
> sanity check : use coherence check
> kebab case : use dash case
- kabes 6y agoWhat's the problem with using a word like fat in a way that has no negative connotation (as in fat client)?
- alpaca128 6y agoSame as "sanity check". It seems people with severe anxiety or similar issues prefer to change their surrounding environment to not be reminded of their possible perceived shortcomings instead of getting professional help. It's sad that this happens in the first place, but also in the same breath as change proposals in the name of fighting racism and other discrimination. I don't want to sound insensitive, but people who struggle with encountering terms like "fat" or "sanity" in their everyday life could achieve a significantly better quality of life by improving themselves. I know that from first-hand experience and from professionals who actually have patients with fear of flying and all kinds of other ailments, and I think being so accomodating actually hurts the affected people more in the long term than it helps.
- objectivetruth 6y agoIf making an innocuous and minor change to your vocabulary to help a colleague bothers you so much, maybe it's you that needs the professional help. (Your implied "solution" of "all people with severe anxiety should just get professional help to solve it" incorrectly presumes that professional help always solves that problem AND greatly over-estimates the number of people that have access to said professional help.) That's just me, though. I'm already an oddity on HN because I don't care if an employer fires people for saying racist things nor do I care if a social media company chooses to end its professional relationship with a user that posts anti-vax nonsense.
- tsss 6y agoI think those people just want to impose their will on others and engage in attention seeking by constantly being offended about anything and everything. People with anxiety usually want to do the opposite: Stay in the background and not attract any attention to themselves.
- alpaca128 6y agoTrue, that's definitely a big reason. There are enough public examples where people were outraged in the name of other groups that they didn't even ask or talk with about the issue beforehand.
- rbinv 6y agoSo I once had an overweight, non-secondary client with a stuck process within the perimeter network. Initial coherence checks quickly foreshadowed that this would turn out to be quite an opaque-box thing to debug. Unfortunately, they had removed kill and killall for some reason.
- randomcarbloke 6y agoactually "kill" is also impermissible
- bierjunge 6y agoIt's a reference to the kill and killall commands from *NIX, so it would be allowed if formatted as code.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y agoYes, similarly to their recommended example for allowlist: 'Add a user to the allowlist (whitelist) by entering the following: whitelist adduser EMAIL_ADDRESS.' I feel enlightened.
- Aeolun 6y agoKebab case is controversial?
- mdoms 6y agoYeah I feel like this document forbids a lot of fun language for no good reason. Kebab case and hamburger menu for example.
- londons_explore 6y agoTo those who don't touch pork/ham, touching a hamburger menu isn't great...
- deckiedan 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger#Etymology_and_terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger#Etymology_and_termin... > The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, > Germany's second-largest city. Hamburger in German is > the demonym of Hamburg, similar to frankfurter and wiener, > names for other meat-based foods and demonyms of the cities > of Frankfurt and Vienna (in German Wien) respectively.
- londons_explore 6y agoA Google search for Wiener suggests it isn't something one really wants to touch either!
- gher-shyu3i 6y agoI don't eat pork, and the work hamburger is not offensive to me. Plus, it comes from Hamburg. I'm tired of virtue signallers telling others what to be offended about and what not to be offended about.
- anchpop 6y agoJust because it has the prefix “ham”? Can muslims use ham radio or hamming codes or hammers or hammocks or visit Hamburg?
- avereveard 6y agoI think the kebab case rename has some merit beyond political what kebab case is: this-is-a-test what kebab case should actually have been: -this-is-a-test-
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toxik 6y agoA hung jury, or a deadlocked jury, is that not proper to say according to Google? Blackbox is just insane — sorry I mean incoherent. Sanity check? Dummy variable? Writing documentation without these words would make it hard to read.
- 72deluxe 6y agoYes, I hung a picture on the wall once. A violent act indeed!
- toxik 6y agoI hope you didn't use a nail because 1) some religious groups may be sensitive to this word since Jesus was nailed to the cross 2) some might interpret it as a sexual innuendo Also I certainly hope there was no frame, because some ethnic groups have been framed for crimes in the past. In fact, if your painting builds on the heritage of colonial culture, it is inherently racist and problematic. The only progressive option, really, is to tear down the wall.
- 839nvu7awn 6y agoAs a former resident of East Berlin, I'm offended.
- dash2 6y agoThis reminds me of an apocryphal story from development economics. Someone's working paper gets read by an academic from a more qualitative discipline, and they get a furious email: "how dare you say Africans are dummies, and live in log houses?"
- ketzu 6y agoPersonally, I think the alternatives for whitelist/blacklist and blackbox are just better in actually transporting more of the intended meaning.
- alpaca128 6y agoThey also don't roll off the tongue as well, which is, whether we like it or not, one of the main deciding factors for how language evolves. Imho attempts to replace established terms could be much more successful in wider adoption if they took this into account. For example I don't know why most try to push "denylist" instead of the more obvious "blocklist". Slang exists for a reason, and going the opposite way just makes everything harder.
- PeterisP 6y agoI work a bit on translation of terminology w.r.t new terms, and my pet theory is that the key factor for predicting whether a proposed translation will catch on and get used is the syllable count; proposed terms that are short to use get used, but proposed longish terms get abandoned whenever there is a shorter alternative - perhaps they get used in official documentation, but in practice everyone tends to use the shorter alternative even if it's worse in all other aspects. From that perspective; allowlist and denylist are three syllables each; blacklist, blocklist and whitelist are two - so my experience suggests that in the end the latter will be used instead of the former whenever possible.
- alpaca128 6y agoSome of those really scream "double standards" to me. > the process is hanging So are my clothes and the bells in the tower, but I haven't heard a complaint about those. > whitelist/blacklist Interestingly nobody seems to bat an eye when yet another video or article talks about vantablack("the blackest black"), white noise or a whitepaper. It's so hard for me to support such attempts to choose better words when it always comes with other additions that simply do not make any sense.
- tolbish 6y agoWhite/black refers to allow/deny in this case, so your white paper and vantablack examples wouldn't work here as they have no good or bad connotation. Better examples maybe would be "black ice" or "white dress = purity for weddings", but those aren't related to computing.
- alpaca128 6y ago> your white paper and vantablack examples wouldn't work here Note my example was not about bleached paper but the actual term white paper used in business and other contexts. > but those aren't related to computing. Skin color isn't related to computing either, but here we are.
- tolbish 6y agoThe 'white' part of 'white paper' does not refer to positive or negative, hence why it is not a good example.
- alpaca128 6y agoBlackbox testing doesn't have a positive or negative connotation either but activists still want it to be changed. Also e.g. "white" isn't seen as positive because of skin color, it's more a cleanliness/innocence thing. In my native language we have a phrase roughly meaning "wearing a white shirt" which indicates someone doesn't figuratively have blood on their hands/clothes. You could associate this word with white teeth or clouds just as much as with skin color. That's the problem with this whole debate: people pushing for changes with the same precision as word filters failing at "Scunthorpe", without care for context or details. Sure, it's easier that way. But also harder to justify.
- eli 6y agoWhat does "political" mean in this context?
- erik_seaberg 6y agoA deadletter queue contains messages that couldn’t be dispatched. It’s my preferred term, but if I had to censor it at gunpoint and pick a euphemism, it’d probably be “exception file” because that’s where batch processes traditionally copy input records that failed.