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The same can be said of almost any field. Algebraic rings have little to do with rings in real life, tensors have little to do with the muscle in my calf, and s
by GuiA 12y ago
The same can be said of almost any field. Algebraic rings have little to do with rings in real life, tensors have little to do with the muscle in my calf, and so on.
What do you suggest? We could invent new words - great, instead of an octave we now have a zargablub. Not terribly helpful.
Or we could give concepts more explicit names - instead of octave, we now have interval-between-two-pitches-with-logarithm-base-two. But all the experts will soon abbreviate this to something else, and soon enough we'll have the same problem we started with.
Or we could try to find a modern word that explains the concept better than the legacy one, but that means that all material from before the change is going to become very hard to understand unless you know all synonyms for a given concept. And since language is always evolving, in 50 years people will complain that your once modern and easy to understand word is now obscure terminology.
Really, what do you suggest? Jargon is hard for the newcomers, but there's a reason it exists- it enables experts to communicate clearly and non ambiguously about specific concepts and ideas. It's infinitely better for things to be hard to get acquainted with in the first 6 months, and then you get to used it, than to have a field where no progress is made because no one can communicate.
It's kind of like software, actually - these days, it's all about ease of use and being able to pick up an application and use it in 5 seconds flat without having to read a manual. Which is fine if your software is Snapchat or Instagram, but terrible if you're building a synthesizer or video editor or statistics package. In some cases, it is worth having something that's hard to learn but is very powerful once you've gotten past the initial hurdle, because while you will only be a beginner for a short while, once you are past that you will be an expert for the rest of your life. (these ideas are developed in Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface)
- tormeh 12y agoDefenders of jargon usually pick examples in which a better substitution would be hard to find, yet unnecessary jargon abounds. Then there's necessary jargon but which is in conflict with jargon from another field. Sigh.
- Retra 12y agoI have as much of an instinct to dislike jargon as anybody, but when I am writing code (in Haskell usually,) I find that naming things proc, process, process', preprocess'', etc., to not be any less confusing... So there is a certain usefulness to it, and I comfort myself by knowing that our words are mostly all arbitrary anyway.
- tormeh 12y agoIn my opinion Haskell is horribly jargon-heavy. Its syntax is a disaster.
- encoderer 12y agoJargon doesn't have to be complicated. You praise jargon as "infinitely better", the alternative being "no progress" but there's no room for improvement? The jargon we use is not some perfectly designed DSL, it's a catalog of concepts accumulated over decades and centuries. It's not master planned, it's organic sprawl. And I think it's fair game to critique. Also, it's totally fair to raise an issue without having a solution or suggestion. And the lack of one doesn't make the issue less valid. And "zargablub"? Straw-man territory...
- chongli 12y agoAlso, it's totally fair to raise an issue without having a solution or suggestion Sure it's fair, but is it helpful? I guess in some way it is helpful to raise awareness of the issue but then what? We all stand around with our hands in our pockets, whistling away.
- coldtea 12y ago>The jargon we use is not some perfectly designed DSL, it's a catalog of concepts accumulated over decades and centuries. It's not master planned, it's organic sprawl. Organic is usually better than "master planned". Evolution et al...
- baddox 12y agoA straw man argument occurs when someone misrepresents their opponent's argument. That clearly did not happen.
- jackmaney 12y agoAs a mathematician by training (who has done mathematical research), I can confirm that creating names for new objects and concepts is no easier in mathematics than in programming. Creating the right notation (when it is necessary to do so) can be even harder.