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It's just like utilize. Crotchety old folks will bitch and moan that it is not a real word and unnecessary in any event, but the world will ignore them and use
by raganwald 18y ago
It's just like utilize. Crotchety old folks will bitch and moan that it is not a real word and unnecessary in any event, but the world will ignore them and use the words it wants to use. English is a living language, and sometimes that means it suffers from unsightly warts.
- mhb 18y agoThere's a distinction between completely useless, bogus words which duplicate the functionality of existing ones and new words which convey some new meaning (e.g. bromance). It's surprising that in the world of programming, in which precision is essential, there are so many advocates for cruftiness in English.
- raganwald 18y agoIt's surprising in the world of programming, in which precision is essential, there are so many advocates for cruftiness in English. In programming, precision is essential. In human communication, it is often inconsequential. We sped our time railing against our arbitrary and fickle natures, demanding precisely worded specification, imposing workflow and permissions straightjackets on programs, when in reality all that matters is that people feel happy when they use what we build. If someone feels happy saying the words "performant" and "utilize" to me, that is enough.
- mhb 18y agoWjdsfl sd dfsfd sfsdfKdsa?
- gruseom 18y agoIt's surprising that in the world of programming, in which precision is essential, there are so many advocates for cruftiness in English. Boy would you not like my code. It's full of neologisms. Undivify. Wipeage. Calcval. Zillions of them! I'd say this makes my code better English, not worse. I choose words carefully and do not hesitate to make a new one if existing ones don't communicate just what is wanted. It's not an arbitrary process and has nothing to do with sloppiness or vanity. It has to do with making the language fit the problem. Oh, and I use "performant" all the time, too. What other adjective signifies the qualities that programmers have in mind when they say "performance"?
- mmc 18y ago"Fast"
- gruseom 18y agoSpeed is the most important part, but not the whole concept.
- demallien 18y agoEfficient? At least that's what 7 of 9 always uses... And who's going to argue witha reclaimed borg?
- gruseom 18y agoI would say that "performant" is a narrower term than "efficient", so no, the two don't coincide. This whole argument is silly, of course. Natural language is so heavily overloaded that you could never regularize it in the way people seem to be proposing, and if you could, you would ruin it.
- mhb 18y agoIt's an aesthetic argument. If you make your constraint tight enough, you're forced into concocting a new word to fix some imagined failing of the existing language. We don't need an adjective that signifies performance and we also don't need an adjective that signifies performance that starts with "perform". Instead, you can rearrange the wording a little to convey the exact same meaning. By working within the constraints, an elegant solution emerges. By all means add words if they are clever or pleasing or convey a nuance that can't be achieved with what already exists. Performant and functionality don't meet those criteria.
- sdp 18y agoWhy not follow this to its logical conclusion? Remove all synonyms Example: fine -> good Remove antonyms and just negate the word Example: bad -> ungood Remove special-case nouns: just combine a noun and one or more adjectives to reach the same meaning with fewer fundamental words. Example: great -> doubleplusgood; murder -> collateral damage We could call this doubleplusgood language newspeak.
- mhb 18y agoWhy not follow this to its logical conclusion? I did. The masses were not amused.