7 ms·
A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"
- rich_sasha 1y agoI like this approach, but as it won't survive one VC pitch, I guess that's that. Google basically had primum non nocere as a motto and we all know how that ended.
- pjmlp 1y agoThat was marketing material, for the same kinds of folks that believe company guidelines are worth anything, beyond yearly checks on required internal trainings.
- yawpitch 1y agoI like “e nihilo, unum”… from zero, one. That said, I think it’d be “Tuere utentis, datum, et verum”… “data”, IIRC, would imply plurality.
- stavros 1y agoEx* nihilo.
- valleyer 1y agoBoth are accepted. See one of the mottos of the US, "e pluribus, unum".
- stavros 1y agoAh, I see, thanks.
- globnomulous 1y agoThe 'x' is omitted when the following word starts with a consonant. The only places where you're likely to find counterexamples are in poetry, where breaking the rule can be metrically expedient.
- sunrunner 1y agoIs this a valid decription of the successor function? Incidentally, if you have three hours to spare on some casual Lambda Calculus introduction, I always think [1] is a fun watch. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=5C6sv7-eTKg https://youtube.com/watch?v=5C6sv7-eTKg
- jraph 1y agoThis crossed my mind for sure :-) Valid but only partial since it only describes one value.
- benrutter 1y agoFrom what I can tell from my knowledge and googling (I did latin in school a long time ago, but full disclusure, was not good at it) data is latin for "given things" so is gramatically correct here in the plural and the accusative case (you want 'given things' not 'given thing'). If we're going to nitpick (which we obviously are!) then maybe "data" doesn't quite have for same implication in latin ("given things") vs English ("information"). Although it actually works quite nicely in the phrase as "given things". Main/most-helpful source: https://nxg.me.uk/note/2005/singular-data/ https://nxg.me.uk/note/2005/singular-data/
- jraph 1y agoI suppose the Latin phrasing needs to be double-checked, but it's nice to have what we ought to aim expressed to concisely (even in English). I guess the Latin makes it sound more serious and authoritative (but also more cryptic, so it's a double-edged sword to manipulate with caution). May it help spread the spirit, with which I completely agree. Kudos for aiming this.
- EagnaIonat 1y agoGetting into a rhetoric style, rule of thirds can help. So something like: Custodi usorem, custodi data, custodi veritatem.
- prmph 1y agoYeah this sounds better, the proposed slogan kind of does not smoothly roll off the tongue
- jraph 1y agoMaybe this? Usorēs, data et veritas primum Users, data and truth first. And actually first in the sentence structure (in both languages). (edit: I had initially used prima - neutral plural nominative for primus (adj.) to target the three subjects, which I don't know if it's right, but using the adverb feels better. I don't do Latin though)
- pif 1y ago> I guess the Latin makes it sound more serious and authoritative Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
- bambax 1y agoAs a user, I want to be enabled / to be able to do more things with a piece of software than what I could do without it. I do NOT want to be "protected".
- drysart 1y agoThat's why it's the developer's responsibility to do it. Because the user won't.
- isoprophlex 1y agoReframing it as "protect their interests" helps. Protect the users from corporate manipulation, from lock-in, from rent seeking, from dishonest practices.
- photonthug 1y agoI'm also reading TFA's intent as less about big-brother and info-hygiene stuff, and more about standard enshittification. Since we're talking about "doing more things with a piece of software than [users] could do without it", well, living with 10% of the features at 1000x of the price would typically still fit those criteria. Since this is exactly where most companies would like to go after establishing market-dominance, yeah, I think we do want to be protected. Whether any dev or group of devs could realistically push back against the forces at work in the org or the wider economy here is a separate question of course.
- 1y ago
- spiffyk 1y agoHonestly, I like the motto in English: "Protect the user, the data, the truth." Programming—as opposed to medicine—has very little in terms of a relation to Latin (which shows clearly when TFA had to use ChatGPT to translate the motto to it), and a lot to English. It may not sound as cool, but the message is clear and I can relate to that.
- Waterluvian 1y agoI think it sounds cooler, actually. But I wholly agree with the assessment that there’s really no Latin connection and shouldn’t be forced. Latin isn’t a font! …
- globnomulous 1y agoThis is horrible, horrible spaghetti Latin. "Tueor" in this context sounds very weird to me -- more "oversee" or "watch" than "protect." 'custos' is, to my ear, the idiomatic noun for "protector," and that noun sounds appropriate in this context. "defendo" (a verb meaning 'defend') would probably be more appropriate if we want to insist on using a verb. "Usor" is nonsense -- literal, actual nonsense. It isn't Latin. To my ear it sounds like a misspelling/solecism for "uxor," which means "wife." It sounds kind of like an Aristophanic immigrant/hick character's mangled Greek translated into mispronounced Latin. "Data" means "gifts," literally "things given." It has no connection whatsoever to 'data' in our sense. "Veritatem" sounds almost liturgical (or Neo-Latin?), completely out of place, given the intended sense. That is, it sounds like a metaphysical or religious concept -- not something "factual" or "correct," as seems to be the intended sense, but rather "the goddess truth." One does not protect (or keep watch over) a goddess. Or one does at one's great peril (in myth at least), unless one is an actual religious functionary, a priest or priestess, in which case you probably do watch over the god, just because in temples the divine objects associated with a god/goddess and venerated were often themselves called "the god/goddess."
- globnomulous 1y agoCorrection: > It has no connection whatsoever to 'data' in our sense. This is wrong. There is an etymological connection, which means that 'data' in our sense is derived from the sense 'that which is given.' My point, badly stated, was that the word in this sense is no longer Latin. It doesn't translate directly back into Latin. You'd need to use a different work in order to capture the sense that the word takes in English.
- phtrivier 1y agoWhat would be the proper translation of the moto, then ?
- globnomulous 1y agoBeats me. The very idea of a "user" is, in every phase of Latin that I know, gobbledygook. There's no translation for it. It makes as much sense as "haver" would make to us ("haver of what?"). Maybe "emptores" (buyers)? Sort of? "Data," in our sense, too, sounds wrong to me as a concept in Classical Latin -- too disembodied for effective, accurate translation. Maybe 'cognoscenda,' "that which is to be known/understood," would come close to the intended sense and still be somewhat idiomatic. "Vera" or "verita" sounds, to me, like the right language for the idea of "something true." And like I said, "defendo" sounds like the right verb. The omission of conjunctions sounds as abrupt, curt, and pompous in Latin as it does in English: "guard the user, the data, the truth." Only Sallust and Tacitus get to write this way. So maybe we could correct it to something like "defende emptoresque cognoscendaque veraque?" No, actually, I take it back. That sounds deranged and wrong, kind of like the raving you might hear from one of the street-corner prophets in Life of Brian. Protecting those things makes no sense, and even the grouping of those three concepts in a single list makes no sense. It sounds like the product of a disordered, unhealthy mind.
- jd24 1y agocringe, just use english why would programmers be the gatekeepers of truth?
- jraph 1y agoI see this not as gatekeeping truth, but as an invitation to decide not to help spreading misinformation by working for entities doing it.
- fl4tul4 1y agoWhat is the `truth` really? That question has 'plagued' philosophy since its inception. Good post to make us think, thanks for posting.
- fedeb95 1y agoA motto for corporate programmers
- blenderob 1y agoI'm disappointed to see this kind of cringey, ChatGPT-generated nonsense-Latin being posted and upvoted on HN. Yes, I know the author added a disclaimer: > PS: I don’t know any Latin, ChatGPT did the translation for me, so there may be some mistakes. But there aren't just "some mistakes". The Latin is essentially nonsense. The closest meaning I can draw from that phrase is: "Protect wife, given things, truth." That's barely coherent, let alone proper Latin. Is "usorem" even a word? Of course, it's your blog and you're free to post what you like. But I'd hope the HN community would be more discerning. Imagine if someone posted an article with nonsense Fortran code generated by ChatGPT, adding a note like: "PS: I don’t know Fortran, ChatGPT translated this Python to Fortran for me, so there may be some mistakes." If the Fortran didn't even compile, would we still upvote it? I doubt it. And really, why write nonsense Fortran when you could just write clear Python, Go, or Rust that the community very well understands? Likewise, why attempt fake Latin when you can just write plain English, which most people here understand?
- jraph 1y agoI found that particular aspect cringe too, I wouldn't trust ChatGPT to be good at translating to Latin and wouldn't expect it to work remotely well for this. I also wish people refrained from using LLMs at all. But apart from this aspect, I suspect the whole idea / approach pleases / feels good and that's what gets upvoted. edit: the HN post is flagged now, so… xD
- donperignon 1y agoWhere to start… At the end of the day all this good will is exercised not by the individual but the corporation, and we all know that all good words and cultures is just facade, at the end money is everything they care about. Sad but true
- mrkeen 1y agoI don't disagree, but it's useless because it's not instructive. You can agree with it or dismiss it. You can tell yourself you're doing it when you're not. It doesn't say how to do anything. Compare with "Accountants don't use erasers", which instructs how to protect data and the truth.
- PaulKeeble 1y agoDoctors no longer take the Hippocratic oath, they no longer pledge to do no harm. Its a historical oddity and not something that relates to modern medicine.
- salawat 1y agoDisgusting if you ask me. Protect the User? You are the User! Users aren't different than programmers! Right off the bat the God complex so rife in tech shines through! We must protect (this bunch of people, not us) with the power and elevated capabilities we (not they), are allowed to wield. Might as well just call them Lusers and be honest about where the sentiment is coming from. Paternalistic twaddle! You've instantly segregated the base of technology users into a hierarchy, abandoning the egalitarian ethos of the maker. We make tools. Those tools should serve everyone equally. We are not some special technorati or caste. There is no special privilege inherent to the knowledge to drive the machine. We line up blocks one after another, feeding something in one end, to pop out the other. That's it. You aren't some Ubermensch, mandated to draw the line of who needs protection from what. You're a human being with a light board. You want a motto? Make useful things. Gift them to the trustworthy. Teach your art. But remain vigilant against the pernicious. Evil will use our tools as surely as the good ones will. P.S. databases are the root of all evil.
- 7402 1y agoI took an intensive first-year Latin class last summer (The Latin Workshop at Berkeley). Very early on, we were given a sample of a translation into Latin by Google, with the assignment to list dumb grammatical mistakes that Google had made. I think this was to cause anyone who had the idea of using Google to help with homework to abandon THAT idea pretty quickly! It's not a good idea to use Google to translate into Latin.
- 1718627440 1y agoWhich is weird, because Latin has a very formal grammar. If a language is usable with Chomsky's production rules, it's latin.