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Why stop at acronyms? Everyone could add a definition for every word the first time they use it? Or maybe they can assume that since you're reading a webpage yo

Why stop at acronyms? Everyone could add a definition for every word the first time they use it? Or maybe they can assume that since you're reading a webpage you have access to the internet, and could easily look up any words that you don't know.

thomascgalvin 4y ago
Words often have one (or a few) largely agreed-upon definitions. Acronyms are often overloaded based on context, and are less likely to be known by a casual reader. NASA probably doesn't need to be expanded, because even if you don't know that it's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, you do know that they make the up-goers. CD could mean a bunch of things, all context dependent. When it's paired with CI, it becomes easier to guess, but "Bob CD" doesn't tell me anything useful by itself.
- capableweb 4y ago
  If the page just said "Bob CD" without elaborating, I'd agree. But it does go on to describe itself as a "CI Platform", having "Pipelines/Artifacts/Resources" and so on, so you can be pretty sure it's not talking about "compact discs" or whatever. By the way, how to you feel about "ycombinator.com" not really describing that it is just a startup accelerator and not about the lambda calculus combinator?
  - thomascgalvin 4y ago
    The very first text my eyes fell on when visiting ycombinator.com was: > Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. That is a great example of a landing page that actually tells you what's going on.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      That could apply to a cryptocurrency DAO as much as a startup accelerator. Why not just say how the funding works instead of masking it in that way?
codeulike 4y ago
I sit in the 'Writing Best Practice' Cafe, sipping my latte. Outside I see a straw man slide down a slippery slope.
- hluska 4y ago
  You didn’t know an extremely common acronym in our industry. You have absolutely no room for this level of ego.
  - codeulike 4y ago
    Seriously though, all I'm saying is that its good to define acronyms somewhere on a landing page. It can be at the bottom. In the footer even. This shouldn't really be controversial. You're sortof asking how could I not know what CI is. So I'll expand on that a bit. - firstly, it doesn't matter if you think everyone knows it, the industry is deeper and wider than people think. So its polite and good practice to define acronyms. Granted part of the problem here is that this hit the front page of HN so the audience suddenly became a lot wider than the author perhaps expected. - me, personally, in my 40 years I've encountered continuous integration but not enough to see the letters CI and immediately think of CI. And when you encounter a random link on HN it could be anything. Maybe there's some new AI buzzword I havent heard of, called (say) Customizable Intelligence and its like modular AI models and its the big new thing but I havent encountered it before, and people are calling it CI. - ok so I could peruse the page and eventually figure out that they are talking about continuous integration rather than some other thing. Or I could google it. But why make me do detective work like that? To me not defining the acronyms makes it seem like the author is stuck in a little subculture and can't imagine anything outside of it. It kindof puts me off. You could think of it as the textual equivalent of a code smell. Its make me think they're just down a trendy jargon rabbithole and I've seen enough of those over the years. (I'm not saying they are in this case, just saying that to me the lack of definitions put me off) But Ok as I said above this is perhaps something that the author never expected to reach such a wide audience so I'll shut up now. But in general I believe in defining acronyms. Because there's just too damn many of them.
    - 4y ago

thomascgalvin 4y ago

Words often have one (or a few) largely agreed-upon definitions. Acronyms are often overloaded based on context, and are less likely to be known by a casual reader. NASA probably doesn't need to be expanded, because even if you don't know that it's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, you do know that they make the up-goers. CD could mean a bunch of things, all context dependent. When it's paired with CI, it becomes easier to guess, but "Bob CD" doesn't tell me anything useful by itself.

capableweb 4y ago
If the page just said "Bob CD" without elaborating, I'd agree. But it does go on to describe itself as a "CI Platform", having "Pipelines/Artifacts/Resources" and so on, so you can be pretty sure it's not talking about "compact discs" or whatever. By the way, how to you feel about "ycombinator.com" not really describing that it is just a startup accelerator and not about the lambda calculus combinator?
- thomascgalvin 4y ago
  The very first text my eyes fell on when visiting ycombinator.com was: > Y Combinator created a new model for funding early stage startups. That is a great example of a landing page that actually tells you what's going on.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    That could apply to a cryptocurrency DAO as much as a startup accelerator. Why not just say how the funding works instead of masking it in that way?

codeulike 4y ago

I sit in the 'Writing Best Practice' Cafe, sipping my latte. Outside I see a straw man slide down a slippery slope.

hluska 4y ago
You didn’t know an extremely common acronym in our industry. You have absolutely no room for this level of ego.
- codeulike 4y ago
  Seriously though, all I'm saying is that its good to define acronyms somewhere on a landing page. It can be at the bottom. In the footer even. This shouldn't really be controversial. You're sortof asking how could I not know what CI is. So I'll expand on that a bit. - firstly, it doesn't matter if you think everyone knows it, the industry is deeper and wider than people think. So its polite and good practice to define acronyms. Granted part of the problem here is that this hit the front page of HN so the audience suddenly became a lot wider than the author perhaps expected. - me, personally, in my 40 years I've encountered continuous integration but not enough to see the letters CI and immediately think of CI. And when you encounter a random link on HN it could be anything. Maybe there's some new AI buzzword I havent heard of, called (say) Customizable Intelligence and its like modular AI models and its the big new thing but I havent encountered it before, and people are calling it CI. - ok so I could peruse the page and eventually figure out that they are talking about continuous integration rather than some other thing. Or I could google it. But why make me do detective work like that? To me not defining the acronyms makes it seem like the author is stuck in a little subculture and can't imagine anything outside of it. It kindof puts me off. You could think of it as the textual equivalent of a code smell. Its make me think they're just down a trendy jargon rabbithole and I've seen enough of those over the years. (I'm not saying they are in this case, just saying that to me the lack of definitions put me off) But Ok as I said above this is perhaps something that the author never expected to reach such a wide audience so I'll shut up now. But in general I believe in defining acronyms. Because there's just too damn many of them.
  - 4y ago