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Whenever someone argues the uselessness or redundancy of a particular word, a helpful framework to understand their perspective is "Lumpers vs Splitters" : htt

• kragen 11mo ago
  > An extreme caricature example of a "lumper" would just use the word "computer" to label all Turing Complete devices with logic gates. I don't think that's a caricature at all; I've often seen people argue that it should include things like Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer, basically because historically it did, even though such devices are neither Turing-complete nor contain logic gates.
  • mjburgess 11mo ago
    'computer' is an ambiguous word. In a mathematical sense a computational process is just any which can be described as a function from the naturals to naturals. Ie., any discrete function. This includes a vast array of processes. A programmable computer is a physical device which has input states which can be deterministicaly set, and reliably produce output states. A digital computer is one whose state transition is discrete. An analogue computer has continuous state transition -- but still, necessarily, discrete states (by def of computer). An electronic digital programmable computer is an electric computer whose voltage transitions count as states discretely (ie., 0/1 V cutoffs, etc.); its programmable because we can set those states causally and deterministically; and its output state arises causally and deterministically from its input state. In any given context these 'hidden adjectives' will be inlined. The 'inlining' of these adjectives causes an apparent gatekeepery Lumpy/Splitter debate -- but it isnt a real one. Its just ignorance about the objective structure of the domain, and so a mistaken understanding about what adjectives/properties are being inlined.
    • kragen 11mo ago
      Most functions from the naturals to naturals are uncomputable, which I would think calls into question your first definition. It's unfortunate that "computer" is the word we ended up with for these things.
      • mjburgess 11mo ago
        Ah well, that's true -- so we can be more specific: discrete, discrete computable, and so on. But to the overall point, this kind of reply is exactly why I don't think this is a case of L vs. S -- your reply just forces a concession to my definition, because I am just wrong about the property I was purporting to capture. With all the right joint-carving properties to hand, there is a very clear matrix and hierarchy of definitions: abstract mathematical hierarchy vs., physical hierarchy With the physical serving as implementations of partial elements of the mathematical.
        • kragen 11mo ago
          Word definitions are arbitrary social constructs, so they can't really be correct or incorrect, just popular or unpopular. Your suggested definitions do not reflect current popular usage of the word "computer" anywhere I'm familiar with, which is roughly "Turing-complete digital device that isn't a cellphone, tablet, video game console, or pocket calculator". This is a definition with major ontological problems, including things such as automotive engine control units, UNIVAC 1, the Cray-1, a Commodore PET, and my laptop, which have nothing in common that they don't also share with my cellphone or an Xbox. Nevertheless, that seems to be the common usage.
          • lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
            > Word definitions are arbitrary social constructs, so they can't really be correct or incorrect, just popular or unpopular. If you mean that classifications are a matter of convention and utility, then that can be the case, but it isn’t always and can’t be entirely. Classifications of utility presuppose objective features and thus the possibility of classification. How else could something be said to be useful? Where paradigmatic artifacts are concerned, we are dealing with classifications that join human use with objective features. A computer understood as a physical device used for the purpose of computing presupposes a human use of that physical thing “computer-wise”, that is to say objectively, no physical device per se is a computer, because nothing inherent in the thing is computing (what Searle called “observer relative“). But the physical machine is objectively something which is to say ultimately a collection of physical elements of certain kinds operating on one another in a manner that affords a computational use. We may compare paradigmatic artifacts with natural kinds, which do have an objective identity. For instance, human beings may be classified according to an ontological genus and an ontological specific difference such as “rational animal“. Now, we may dispute certain definitions, but the point is that if reality is intelligible–something presupposed by science and by our discussion here at the risk of otherwise falling into incoherence–that means concepts reflect reality, and since concepts are general, we already have the basis for classification.
• mjburgess 11mo ago
  I'm not convinced your L/S dichotomy applies. The concern there is that the natural world (or some objective target domain) has natural joints, and the job of the scientist (, philosopher, et al.) is to uncover those joints. You want to keep 'hair splitting' until the finest bones of reality are clear, then grouping hairs up into lumps, so their joints and connections are clear. The debate is whether the present categorisation objectively under/over-generates , and whether there is a factor of the matter. If it over-includes, then real structure is missing. In the case of embeddings vs. vectors, classical vs., baroque, transpiler vs., compiler -- i think the apparent 'lumper' is just a person ignorant of classification scheme offered, or at least, ignorant of what property it purports to capture. In each case there is a real objective distinction beneath the broader category that one offers in reply, and that settles the matter. There is no debate: a transpiler is a specific kind of compiler; an embedding vector is a specific kinds of vector; and so on. There is nothing at stake here as far as whether the categorisation is tracking objective structure. There is only ignorance on the part of the lumper: the ignorant will, of course, always adopt more general categories ("thing" in the most zero-knowledge case). A real splitter/lumper debate would be something like: how do we classify all possible programs which have programs as their input and output? Then a brainstorm which does not include present joint-carving terms, eg., transformers = whole class, transformer-sourcers = whole class on source code, ...
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • seg_lol 11mo ago
    > I'm not convinced your L/S dichotomy applies. Proceeds to urm actually split.
    • datadrivenangel 11mo ago
      All ontologies are false. But some are useful.
      • cestith 11mo ago
• AlienRobot 11mo ago
  That's very interesting! Splitters make more sense to me since different things should be categorized differently. However, I believe a major problem in modern computing is when the splitter becomes an "abstraction-splitter." For example, take the mouse. The mouse is used to control the mouse cursor, and that's very easy to understand. But we also have other devices that can control the mouse cursor, such as the stylus and touchscreen devices. A lumper would just say that all these types of devices are "mouses" since they behave the same way mouses do, while a splitter would come up with some stupid term like "pointing devices" and then further split it into "precise pointing devices" and "coarse pointing devices" ensuring that nobody has absolutely no idea what they are talking about. As modern hardware and software keeps getting built on piles and piles of abstractions, I feel this problem keeps getting worse.
  • ethmarks 11mo ago
    Doesn't it make sense to use words that mean what you're using them to mean? By your logic I could use the term "apple" to describe apples, oranges, limes, and all other fruit because they all behave in much the same ways that apples do. But that's silly because there are differences between apples and oranges [citation needed]. If you want to describe both apples and oranges, the word for that is "fruit", not "apple". Using a touchscreen is less precise than using a mouse. If the user is using a touchscreen, buttons need to be bigger to accommodate for the user's lack of input precision. So doesn't it make sense to distinguish between mice and touchscreens? If all you care about is "thing that acts like a mouse", the word for that is "pointing device", not "mouse".
    • AlienRobot 11mo ago
      The point is that it's simpler to understand what something is by analogy (a touchscreen is a mouse) than by abstraction (a mouse is a pointing device; a touchscreen is also a pointing device), since you need a third, abstracting concept to do the latter.
• cyco130 11mo ago
  It's all about context, isn't it? "Humans vs. animals" is an important distinction to make in some contexts and useless in others. Insisting on the fact that humans are also animals if we're talking about, say, "language in humans vs. animals" is unproductive. It just makes discussions harder by forcing everyone to add "_non-human_ animals" to every mention. But if we're talking about, say, cellular biology, it's unproductive to force everyone to write "human and animal cells" instead of just "animal cells". Similarly, distinguishing between transpilers and compilers might be important in some contexts and useless in others. Transpilers are source-to-source compilers, a subset of compilers. Whether it matters depends on the context.
• thfuran 11mo ago
  >An extreme caricature example of a "lumper" would just use the word "computer" to label all Turing Complete devices with logic gates. "Computer"? You mean object, right?
  • ObscureScience 11mo ago
    You mean point of local maximum in the mass field?
• mlyle 11mo ago
  I think the argument here is not really where one should draw the line and whether transpiler should be a different word... I think the argument centers on how transpilers are often justified as being something quite different in difficulty than writing a whole compiler -- and in practice, nearly the whole set of problems of writing a compiler show up. So, it's more like, don't use the distinction to lie to yourself.
• antonvs 11mo ago
  > But an enthusiast would get irritated and argue "Bach is not classical music, it's Baroque music. Mozart is classical music." Baroque music is a kind of classical music, though.
• Izkata 11mo ago
  "Compiler" encompassing "transpiler" I think is wrong anyway. There's a third term that doesn't seem to get nearly as much pushback, that didn't come up in your link, has yet to be mentioned here, and isn't in the article, but adds context for these two: decompiler. Compiling is high-level to low-level (source code to runnable, you rarely look at the output). Decompiling is low-level to high-level (runnable to source code, you do it to get and use the output). Transpiling is between two languages of roughly the same level (source code to source code, you do it to get and use the output). Certainly there's some wishy-washy-ness due to how languages relate to each other, but none of these terms really acts like a superset of the others.
  • cestith 11mo ago
    I like your definitions, but all three of these could be called subsets of compilers.
    • ablob 11mo ago
      By the definitions given they can not, as no function subsumes another. By whatever you define as "compiler" maybe, but I see no point in this kind of interaction that essentially boils down to subsumtion to an entity you refuse to describe any further. Is there a merit to this? Can whatever you call compiler do more? Is it all three of the things mentioned combined? Who knows - as is stands I only know that you disagree with the definitions given/proposed.
      • cestith 11mo ago
        I think they are fine definitions. I think a transpiler, a term rewriter, an assembler, a stand-alone optimizer, and even some pretty printers are subclasses of compilers. I define a compiler as something that takes an input in a language, does transformations, and produces a transformed output in a language. All of them do that, and they are more specific terms for types of compilers.
    • jrm4 11mo ago
      Except that they do what useful words do; provide (more) useful information.
• bondarchuk 11mo ago
  Whenever someone argues the uselessness or redundancy of a particular word we just have to remember that the word exists because at least two parties have found it useful to communicate something between them.
  • thfuran 11mo ago
    But they may have done so before the meaning shifted or before other, more useful words were coined.
• zem 11mo ago
  in addition to that, some people just seem to have an extreme aversion to neologisms. I remember being surprised by that when ajax (the web technology) first came out and there was a huge "why does this thing which is just <I honestly forget what it was 'just'> need its own name?" faction.
• downboots 11mo ago
  and a combination lock is a permutation lock