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Agree. For those not familiar with Rich's famous use of etymology, see his 2011 presentation "Simple made Easy" as a good example: https://www.infoq.com/present

Agree. For those not familiar with Rich's famous use of etymology, see his 2011 presentation "Simple made Easy" as a good example: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/ https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/ Side question: Rich seems to use etymology as a tool for original thinking and clear explanations. Are there other people who do this as well as he does?

aporetics 3y ago
I don't know about technologists who use it in writing or speaking like Rich, but you can trace writers' use of etymology to provoke thinking at least back to Plato. More recent, prominent examples would be Hannah Arendt's acceptance speech in 1975 receiving Denmark's Sonning Prize, in which she uses the etymology of "person", and at least Martin Heidegger's essay The Question Concerning Technology in which he plays with several, including the etymology of "technology" itself.
notduncansmith 3y ago
I’ve always been fascinated with language, and long had a hobby of looking up etymologies (my high school Latin teacher was great at pointing these out in class), but Rich’s style definitely pushed me to use it as a tool for thinking. Naming things is (famously) hard, but a strong command of language (and willingness to dig through the thesaurus) has lit the way through many difficult situations.
Raticus79 3y ago
I use etymonline for this kind of thing often. Our complex words are compositions of lots of forgotten meaning... I find it helps to retrace those steps. e.g. https://www.etymonline.com/word/system https://www.etymonline.com/word/system - see how it's about composition, not so much about ways of doing things.
KingMob 3y ago
And yet, the word Hickey coined, "complect", is silly at best, and a gatekeeping obstacle to outsiders/newcomers at worst.
- fnordsensei 3y ago
  Coined? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complect https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complect
  - KingMob 3y ago
    Revived, then.
    - divs1210 3y ago
      Are you complaining he used a word you weren't familiar with?
- rjknight 3y ago
  Funnily enough, your complaint here is that although it may be simple, it is not necessarily easy, while the talk is an argument that we should prefer simplicity even at the cost of some (temporary) un-ease.
  - KingMob 3y ago
    I'm not sure how you got that impression from my comment. But for the sake of argument, I'm saying "complect" is neither simple *nor* easy. It's obviously not easy since it's unfamiliar. But nor is it simple, or to be really precise, no simpler than alternatives, since it doesn't conceptually improve on plain words and phrases like "complicate", "intertwine", "mix up", "separate", "tease apart", etc. It adds nothing, really. Your comment kind of highlights some of the errors many take away from "Simple Made Easy": that ease is in opposition to simplicity and/or that they are completely orthogonal.

aporetics 3y ago

I don't know about technologists who use it in writing or speaking like Rich, but you can trace writers' use of etymology to provoke thinking at least back to Plato. More recent, prominent examples would be Hannah Arendt's acceptance speech in 1975 receiving Denmark's Sonning Prize, in which she uses the etymology of "person", and at least Martin Heidegger's essay The Question Concerning Technology in which he plays with several, including the etymology of "technology" itself.

notduncansmith 3y ago

I’ve always been fascinated with language, and long had a hobby of looking up etymologies (my high school Latin teacher was great at pointing these out in class), but Rich’s style definitely pushed me to use it as a tool for thinking. Naming things is (famously) hard, but a strong command of language (and willingness to dig through the thesaurus) has lit the way through many difficult situations.

Raticus79 3y ago

I use etymonline for this kind of thing often. Our complex words are compositions of lots of forgotten meaning... I find it helps to retrace those steps. e.g. https://www.etymonline.com/word/system https://www.etymonline.com/word/system - see how it's about composition, not so much about ways of doing things.

KingMob 3y ago

And yet, the word Hickey coined, "complect", is silly at best, and a gatekeeping obstacle to outsiders/newcomers at worst.

fnordsensei 3y ago
Coined? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complect https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complect
- KingMob 3y ago
  Revived, then.
  - divs1210 3y ago
    Are you complaining he used a word you weren't familiar with?
rjknight 3y ago
Funnily enough, your complaint here is that although it may be simple, it is not necessarily easy, while the talk is an argument that we should prefer simplicity even at the cost of some (temporary) un-ease.
- KingMob 3y ago
  I'm not sure how you got that impression from my comment. But for the sake of argument, I'm saying "complect" is neither simple *nor* easy. It's obviously not easy since it's unfamiliar. But nor is it simple, or to be really precise, no simpler than alternatives, since it doesn't conceptually improve on plain words and phrases like "complicate", "intertwine", "mix up", "separate", "tease apart", etc. It adds nothing, really. Your comment kind of highlights some of the errors many take away from "Simple Made Easy": that ease is in opposition to simplicity and/or that they are completely orthogonal.