3 ms·

Meaningless and non-constructive pedantry.

chrisweekly 1y ago
I'm not the OP you're responding to, but to be fair, in a sentence about big-O perf characteristics, which includes the word "algorithms", using "exponentially" in a colloquial non-technical sense is an absolutely terrible word choice.
- linguistbreaker 1y ago
  Exponentially bad word choice even... since we're using that word however we want now? I don't think this is meaningless or non-constructive pedantry - we're a technical community and those are technical words.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
msgodel 1y ago
I disagree. Misuse of the word "exponential" is a major pet peeve of mine. It's a particular case of the much more common "use mathematically precise phrasing to sound careful/precise" that you often find in less than honest writing. Here they are actually using it to refer to growth functions (which is rare for this error) and being honest (which is also rare IMO) but it's still wrong. They should have written about quadratic or quadratic vs linear. Regardless sloppy language leads to sloppy thought.
- keybored 1y ago
  Sloppy writing is up orders of magnitude lately.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    It will decimate readership.
- sneak 1y ago
  My personal pet peeve is when the term “exponentially” is used to refer to a change between precisely two data points. It’s a very specific subset of the one you’re describing. “Tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
  - morepedantic 1y ago
    >My personal pet peeve Just be glad you have only one.
morepedantic 1y ago
>pedantry I wasted 2 minutes of my life looking for the exponential reduction. So did many others. Now I'm wasting more of my life shit posting about it, but at least that's a conscious choice.
- account42 1y ago
  No, you spent 2 minutes improving your reading comprehension.
  - morepedantic 1y ago
    You're insulting people on the internet AND you're wrong, which puts you one Hitler comparison away from the trifecta.

I'm not the OP you're responding to, but to be fair, in a sentence about big-O perf characteristics, which includes the word "algorithms", using "exponentially" in a colloquial non-technical sense is an absolutely terrible word choice.

linguistbreaker 1y ago
Exponentially bad word choice even... since we're using that word however we want now? I don't think this is meaningless or non-constructive pedantry - we're a technical community and those are technical words.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

msgodel 1y ago

I disagree. Misuse of the word "exponential" is a major pet peeve of mine. It's a particular case of the much more common "use mathematically precise phrasing to sound careful/precise" that you often find in less than honest writing. Here they are actually using it to refer to growth functions (which is rare for this error) and being honest (which is also rare IMO) but it's still wrong. They should have written about quadratic or quadratic vs linear. Regardless sloppy language leads to sloppy thought.

keybored 1y ago
Sloppy writing is up orders of magnitude lately.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
  It will decimate readership.
sneak 1y ago
My personal pet peeve is when the term “exponentially” is used to refer to a change between precisely two data points. It’s a very specific subset of the one you’re describing. “Tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
- morepedantic 1y ago
  >My personal pet peeve Just be glad you have only one.

morepedantic 1y ago

>pedantry I wasted 2 minutes of my life looking for the exponential reduction. So did many others. Now I'm wasting more of my life shit posting about it, but at least that's a conscious choice.

account42 1y ago
No, you spent 2 minutes improving your reading comprehension.
- morepedantic 1y ago
  You're insulting people on the internet AND you're wrong, which puts you one Hitler comparison away from the trifecta.