News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Captive Portals. Parent comment

Re:Captive Portals by woojoo666 on Thursday July 14, 2022 @05:45AM (#32093927)
There are other costs, like fragmentation: not everybody agrees that "monster" is a good replacement, and there are many places where it definitely isn't a good replacement. Then there's changes to documentation, wikis, and other written documents. Not to mention time spent discussing alternatives and spreading the word.

On a personal level, it may be a few tiny tweaks but also very tiny personal impact. On a global scale, it could be a larger impact but also takes a lot more effort (combined effort of millions of tiny tweaks). Whether that effort is worth the payoff is debatable, especially considering what other initiatives that effort could be directed to.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Captive Portals by macguillicuddy on Thursday July 14, 2022 @09:28AM (#32095830)
This is a good point :-) I suppose if we gradually evolve language over time then we amortise and reduce any cost. I don't think we necessarily need to go around rewriting any books for most issues - but if this blog author (and others) tweak their language, maybe the next book to be written on the issue will make a more meaningful step forward, without any refactor cost. In any case there seems to be be no argument here that a given author shouldn't choose to tweak their words as they see fit where meaning is still clear - something that the parent commenter was implying as an issue.
[ Parent | on HN ]