6 ms·
Fancy word for an obvious concept.
by corethree 3y ago
Fancy word for an obvious concept.
- msm_ 3y agoYou say it like it's something bad. Having a common vocabulary is extremely helpful for communication. Instead of restating the obvious concept over and over all the time you can just ask your peer "is this idempotent?". Naming something also helps us to think about it. "A square" is also an obvious concept, but by naming it you can reason about it more easily, and use it to define more abstract concepts later. One of the main reasons we - humans - dominate the earth, is because we evolved an advanced language, which allows us to name ideas and build upon them.
- corethree 3y agoVocabulary can delude and manipulate as well. Idempotent serves to delude more than it informs. In this case idempotent is taking an trivial and obvious concept and makes it seem more snobbish. Why write a whole article about an obvious and trivial concept? Perhaps the word itself is making it more complex then it is. The software industry is littered with these words. Design patterns especially. Rob Pike once referred to it as infatuation with nomenclature.
- dennis_jeeves2 3y agoSeconded. It make the lowly programmer feel intelligent.