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Ask HN: What's your least favorite tech word? Mine's "non-trivial".
Any time I hear someone mutter "non-trivial" a little piece of me dies inside. What other art/profession uses that word?
I can't imagine an automotive engineer describing a new car engine as non-trivial or a painter describing his work as non-trivial.
Anyways, what words wind you guys up?
Edit: Happy Monday, btw.
- jacquesm 17y agoparadigm shift leverage
- TallGuyShort 17y agoIt's not limited to tech people, but I do hear them say it a lot: "irregardless". edit: Oh and let's not forget Scott Adam's favorite: Synergy
- DanWood 17y ago"irregarldess" burns my ears, too. I also want to fight when I hear someone say "often times" (redundant) or "I don't disagree with you" (passive-aggressive double negative)
- tdonia 17y agosavvy
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoQuantum, in almost any context. I do use non-trivial, but I'm a mathematician, and I refer you to Feynman's comments about tthe use of 'trivial'.
- gdp 17y agoI have to step in here to defend "non-trivial". Perhaps it is abused as a term by the population at large, but I'm reasonably sure it has its roots in theoretical computer science and maths. It has a meaning that is distinct from "complex". It means that something requires something more than pure mechanical verification or straightforward inspection. A painter could use "non-trivial" in a sensible way. How much effort is involved in X? Well, it's non-trivial, because it involves more than having a look. It isn't estimating the effort, it is instead a binary classification - trivial and non-trivial. Finally, to answer your question, I don't dislike individual words. I only dislike them once they are combined into sentences.
- DanielStraight 17y agoI'm a big fan of "non-trivial" myself, especially after reading http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engineers_feasibility/ http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engine...
- billswift 17y agoNon-trivial is important in mathematics. But I especially like it when used for humorous understatement; "Re-implementing Microsoft Office would be a non-trivial effort."
- zackola 17y agokludge synergy/synergistic/synergize proactive xml
- jacquesm 17y agoNo, not kludge, please :) It's one of the best tech words out there, it is very specific and there is no other good way of saying it without using a whole pile of words.
- zackola 17y agoIt is a good word. I'm not saying people shouldn't use it. It is an ugly, ugly word to me - I hate the sound of it, which is part of why it is my least favorite. It's one of those words that sound like what they mean to me. What is that called anyway? Not onomatopoeia. I also tend to hate it because I can tell before even starting to fix the kludge, it's likely to involve an large overhaul instead of a small bug fix.
- jacquesm 17y agoI think that's how most kludges are born. Someone is given the assignment to repair something, they figure out that it will take them way too much time doing it the 'proper' way (their boss might simply not give them a time budget large enough to fix it well) so they resort to a kludge.
- lamby 17y ago"Realtime"
- yan 17y agoEnterprise.
- MikeMacMan 17y agoAnd its evil twin, Mission Critical
- jacquesm 17y agoAh, but Mission Critical actually has a place. When you're working for NASA, you operate a nuclear plant or some other outfit like that. Everywhere else it's just pretending you do something important.
- ganley 17y agoThere's a joke that when an engineer says 'nontrivial,' he means 'impossible.'
- billswift 17y agoThe joke I heard was that it meant he didn't want to be bothered about it.
- odvious 17y agorevolutionary
- davidw 17y ago"Trivial" itself can sound quite snotty, said in the right way.
- jsm386 17y agodead simple
- yannis 17y agoErlang!
- Maro 17y agosynergy (Go watch 'In good company')
- michaelcampbell 17y ago"Configurable"
- gaius 17y agoIdempotent. But non-trivial does have a specific meaning: it means that we don't have any code already written or proven technique that we can simply reuse for or apply to this problem, and some new knowledge will have to be synthesized, and there's a risk in making any estimates of time/cost until more is known.
- chuffwaffle 17y agoWhat's wrong with idempotent? It has a precise, useful meaning
- gaius 17y agoIt's often misused. Along with orthogonal.
- Chronos 17y agoshudder We have a business relationship with a financial company based out of Germany, and their system (which sits on top of replicated Oracle) defines "idempotent" to mean "our database already has a cache of the answer we already gave you". Oh, and they gave us a JAR file of client code that does client-side failover, with a fixed 8-second delay to account for the Oracle replication lag between sites. No coordination between different instances of our client. So now, when one client fails over due to a connectivity blip, the other clients get cached error messages (logically equivalent to 404 Not Found). "Idempotent", indeed.
- screwLoose 17y ago'webinar' has been annoying me for years now.
- electronslave 17y agoDrill. Like "drill down". It seems that trepanation might be a good response to someone using this word. "Could you drill down into my data set and shift some paradigms?" "Yes, and while I'm at it, I'll equalize your humours." WHIRR "Indeed."
- yagibear 17y agodisambiguate
- moe 17y agoTurnkey Solution (My brain always translates to turkey inducing...)
- bddbbdb 17y agoTech/business jargon: "leverage" (when used as a verb) anywhere: "utilize" (when used as a word)
- jlintz 17y ago"the cloud" please make it go away, it's totally the next buzzword to replace 'web 2.0'