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Knowing about programming semaphores but not visual semaphores seems quite bizarre to me. A bit like thinking flag or register or stack were only computer terms
by perilunar 4y ago
Knowing about programming semaphores but not visual semaphores seems quite bizarre to me. A bit like thinking flag or register or stack were only computer terms.
- lta 4y agoI figure it's quite common for non native speaker, no ?
- anthomtb 4y agoI am a native English speaker and never heard the word "semaphore" until taking CS classes in college. I cannot think of a common use for the term, unlike flag (see them all the time), register (do that with cars and schools) or stack (lots of those in my kitchen).
- perilunar 4y ago> register (do that with cars and schools) I would think computer register comes from the noun, not the verb — think cash register, not to register a car.
- anthomtb 4y agoI agree, I was just trying to think of how the word "register" comes up in casual conversation. I cannot think of a way that "semaphore" would come up in non-nerd conversation at all.
- theandrewbailey 4y agoOr the covering of an air vent in a house.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoEven as a native speaker, I had been using the programming concept for a few years before I discovered the signaling doohickey.
- lkbm 4y agoI only knew about non-computer semaphores from the Swallows and Amazons books (which are from the 1930s and 1940s). If my mom hadn't read those books to me as a child, I don't know that I'd have come across the concept. "Token ring" is something I learned in networking, and the Wikipedia article doesn't mention railroads at all. I assume that's where the term comes from, but I only heard about railway signalling tokens decades later. (I think they may have appeared in the Thomas the Tank Engine stories on Shining Time Station, but I was quite young at the time.)
- yosito 4y agoSemaphore basically means "traffic light" in many languages.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI don't know if they're on HN yet, but there's a generation for which "writing to disk" has nothing to do with disks of anything.
- zamnos 4y agoDepends on when you want to define "nothing to do with disk" as. M.2 was introduced in 2013 which would make them 9 years old by now, but if we look at Samsung's 2006 PATA SSD (with 32GiB!), then they'd be 17 and could well be on here.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoYeah I suppose there's a lot of wiggle room there. Personally I associate disks with circles because: > In geometry, a disk (also spelled disc) is the region in a plane bounded by a circle. (wikipedia) So you wouldn't find those in an SSD, it would have to be a spinning disk sort of deal.
- pjot 4y agoThe “save” button is generally still a floppy disk as well!
- drusepth 4y agoI use a standard disk icon to represent "saving" in a popular web app I run. I very often see users referring to it with "click the square thing to save".
- getcrunk 4y agoYea, like many computing terms are normal words now being used as jargon
- perilunar 4y agoI'm struggling to think of any computer terms that aren't repurposed 'normal' words, initialisms, acronyms, or portmanteaus. Even the words 'computer', 'program' and 'code' are repurposed.
- carapace 4y ago"thunk"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk Ah but it says, "The term originated as a whimsical irregular form of the verb think." but without citation. Hmm, I dimly recall some hacker wag saying something like, "it's the sound of a continuation hitting the stack"... Maybe "plonk" counts? https://en.everybodywiki.com/Plonk_(Usenet) https://en.everybodywiki.com/Plonk_(Usenet)
- rdlw 4y agoFoo?