4 ms·

guilty as charged

• pests 2y ago
  Ha, seeing the list of jargon being defined was eye opening - I understood everything without a second glance but, like you I assume, I've been exposed to this world for 25+ years as this point and its second nature. I remember the first time I used "characters" in front of a non-technical friend instead of just the more common "letters" or literally anything else.
  • inopinatus 2y ago
    "octets" is a good one, especially if you have musical friends
    • JoshTriplett 2y ago
      I think "octets" is at this point historical jargon with little present value. It dates back to the day when some vendors were fighting for non-8-bit bytes. Those systems are long dead, and "byte" means "8 bits". Given that, I don't know of any context in which "octet" is an important distinction rather than an obfuscation.
      • pests 2y ago
        Still makes a little sense as IPv4 addresses are 32 bytes and we break them down into 4 parts of 8 bits each. No one ever uses the 32 byte number, which will resolve.
        • JoshTriplett 2y ago
          IPv4 addresses are 32 bits, or 4 bytes. "octet" still isn't useful there.
          • pests 2y ago
            On second thought I take disagreement with defining a byte as 8 bits. I would say its de facto 8 these days but not always and has always been hardware-dependent. If I give you a random page of documentation from the last 70 years of computer history and it's talking about a byte, you have no idea if that means 5 bits or 12 or anything else.... which is why I think octet is useful here as it _always_ means 8 bits and always will.
            • JoshTriplett 2y ago
              There's a reasonable distinction between "term useful to understand historical documentation" and "term useful to use in new documentation/communication". No new system or protocol or piece of documentation should ever use non-8-bit bytes. If you're reading old protocol documentation, you get used to "octet" being used in place of "byte"; that doesn't mean new documentation should cater to systems that haven't existed for a long time. (Also, this tangent really isn't worth spending time on.)
              • pests 2y ago
                Yet we seem to have all agreed to use octet, even for new documentation. I browsed the recent RFC submissions and had to stop looking as pretty much every one I checked that was posted this year uses octet. A few examples... https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9565.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9565.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9598.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9598.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9574.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9574.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9582.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9582.txt So why try to force byte into this role? (agreed)
          • pests 2y ago
            I meant 32 bits, of course.
      • inopinatus 2y ago
        so it's triplett vs octet, I see
  • Sesse__ 2y ago
    Characters is a pretty poor term these days, since it can refer to any of bytes, code points, extended grapheme clusters, or possibly more I haven't thought of.
    • pests 2y ago
      That was what I was referring to though - grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbols, letters, numbers, emoji, punctuation, etc.
      • inopinatus 2y ago
        people in plays
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]