3 ms·

I don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of someone who might be a decent computer scientist. Someone who is a decent computer scientist will be

I don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of someone who might be a decent computer scientist. Someone who is a decent computer scientist will be unlikely to care whether you say "regular expression" or "look how smart I am, I know to say that this thing Perl does is called regular expressions by ignorant plebes even though it strictly isn't, let's high-five!" Because, y'know, someone who's actually a decent computer scientist probably has more important things to care about.

kazinator 12y ago
In that case, I also don't want to appear "gratuitously ignorant" in front of such a lesser computer scientist who does care. :) Maybe one thing like this doesn't matter, but if you make a habit out of sloppy use of technical terms, it will not go unnoticed. Analogy: one neuron firing might not exceed a threshold, but thirty seven of them might. > "look how smart I am, I know to say that this thing Perl does is called regular expressions by ignorant plebes even though it strictly isn't, let's high-five!" That's rather verbose, making the cheesy scare quotes finger gesture an appealing alternative.