I like the old hacker term for "reasoning about". Grok. It's much easier to grok a program when everything just runs from top to bottom and doesn't jump to a different third party library every 3 lines or have 15 layers of indirection and frameworks.
Re:Taking PHP Seriously
by andreareina on Friday October 14, 2016 @03:31AM
(#12706603)
"grok" implies a deep understanding, much more so than "reason about".
"Grok" is good. Perhaps it's that it sounds less pretentious, somehow?
Interesting! I have somehow developed the opposite opinion. The phrase "to reason" is plain English and uncomplicated. Grok, by comparison, is arcane and to the uninitiated is semantically opaque. The latter strikes me as a more suitable vehicle for demonstrating pretension.
Re:Taking PHP Seriously
by combatentropy on Thursday October 13, 2016 @07:32PM
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"Reason about" is pretentious, and "grok" is jargon. I think the way to say it in plain, everyday English is "understand."
Fair enough. I never claimed my dislike of "reasoning about" things was rational! 'Grok' definitely has a context, that likely does not include talking to non-hacker types like clients, board members, or whatever.
I understand your situation :) I keep a long list of seemingly innocuous words which, through no fault of their own, are repugnant to my ears. It's utterly irrational.
Re:Taking PHP Seriously
by VintageCool on Thursday October 13, 2016 @05:45PM
(#12704325)
I think that the abstracted language makes it easier to admit that something is difficult to reason about.
Re:Taking PHP Seriously
by andreareina on Friday October 14, 2016 @04:06AM
(#12706702)
It's a pretty nuanced phrase and difficult to replace. I might make the case that "easy to reason about" <=> "simple" in the sense that Rich Hickey uses it[1] but that doesn't do anything for the verb itself.
The phrase has a high correlation with subjects that are themselves highly correlated with smug proponents; functional programming is one of the greater ones of these.
Personally I like the phrase. Then again I self-identify as a (non-smug) SmugLispWeenie[2] so of course I like it.
[1] https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20160709054130/http://c2.com/cgi/...
A bit tangential, but I find myself disliking it too, for no good reason that I can think of.
Perhaps it's something of a crutch in that it's really "I like it more, but 'reason' sounds better" ? Not sure that's quite it, either, as in the above case with a "new everything per request", it's certainly true that it's easier to think about what's happening.