That's unnecessarily cynical. It certainly can give off that impression. But it is also a shortcut for people who work together in a specific domain to be more precise (or more general) than would be implied by non-jargon speech. So to me those things in the sky are just clouds, but to a meteorologist they might be stratocumulus or cirrus.
Another case, a similar one, is the stickiness of obsolete language in a certain domains. I've never used the word "cloture" in a sentence,* but to use it is faster for those who need it than to spell it out. In law, some obsolete words not only carry specific meaning but can call back to existing case law.
For HN, CPU is a good example, being an old word whose precise meaning is quite fluid (used to be literally the cabinet with merely the ALU and some registers; instruction decode was just how it was wired together) and so is jargon too.
* until writing that sentence of course.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio...
Also, C-3PO is short for See-Threepio, and is used for interacting with organics, while R2D2 is short for Artoo-Detoo, which is used for interacting with digitals and arguing with C-3P0, while TWKE-4 is short for Twiki, which is used for saying BDBDBDBD, which is short for Bee Dee Bee Dee Bee Dee Bee Dee.
Jargon has a slightly pejorative sense, just like in the article.
The article does not say, "Do not use the correct words for your discipline." It says, "Do not use meaningless words or overdramatize."
Not necessarily. Jargon is not technical. But it is an emergent feature of language in semi-isolated groups. Things get nicknamed, inside jokes stick, and from the outside it looks performative while inside it’s quite natural. That it subsequently often takes on a performative element, in particular by new comers, is an in-group mechanism, but it’s not always useless as a signalling mechanism. There even seems to be an in-built sense of disgust with respect to overly performative jargon that keeps the system in check most of the time.
Always consider your audience. If you're writing casual communications for a mixed audience, ditch the jargon and use simple words.
If you're speaking to professional peers on business matters, use the precise language. Don't unnecessarily complicate sentences or use complex words when simple words are equally effective, though.
I think it's starting to go the other direction. As a technical-minded person if I have a business meeting and the other person starts throwing those yuppie buzzwords in my face I'll just mentally put them in the "empty suit with an MBA" bin.
It might be my Southern European sensibilities, but I value straightforwardness very highly than time wasting nonsense to signal you're part of the in crowd. Unless the hacker ethos has died, and we're back to the 1980 where middle managers in business suits are the cool guys.
Hell, your comment is full of jargon. "Yuppie", "buzzword", "suit" (and "empty suit"), ...
[0] though it's usually very contextual when that's the case, which is really frustrating when things are taken out of context and either become completely unintelligible, or easily misinterpreted (and sometimes wilfully misrepresented).
Avoiding business jargon doesn't mean having to stick to the 1000 most used English words.
Which the article points out, though not plainly, should be avoided.
In any case, your language here would certainly run afoul of the "simple English" the OP is espousing, and the OP terms such things "jargon", so contextually, yes, it's jargon.
Although personally I agree, the OP is using a particularly sloppy definition of "jargon", which often has a stronger technical connotation than merely metaphorical or business newspeak language.
It means “young urban professional.”
Sorry to burst your bubble but that’s jargon.
> Yuppie isn't jargon, I was thinking about the movie American Psycho.
It’s also jargon.
> It's just a term to refer to your stereotypical middle managers high on their own farts.
I know what those terms mean.
> business jargon
Oh wow look at those goalposts flying by, amazing.
When I wear a T-shirt from a Hackathon to a developer conference I'm signalling just as hard as the sales rep in the suit.
It doesn't necessarily mean that I'll have to go the other way and adopt the mannerisms of the annoying tech guy.
> and we're back to the 1980 where middle managers in business suits are the cool guys.
Nope, we are at the 20's, when social-only corporate climbers know not to use suits on development-dominated cultures (not software development, but "creating new things from known principles" development). So suits are irrelevant nowadays and lost all signaling meaning.
Those hackers got cool and became the guys in the suits. Dollar Uber Alles
That's why jargon exists. It is much better to use 3NF or BCNF or simply normalize or denormalize than to bury the point in many words. .
Those do not increase precision and phrases like "let's take this offline" are even more confused. Are they talking about an annoying idea in a meeting or a broken web server?
I do agree that some technical jargon can help communication between experts. Understanding the jargon marks you out as an expert. That's the root of why so much status-signalling jargon exists.
If someone says let's circle back to topic X they probably know a lot about project management...
I generally find hacker news interpretation of business jargon as uncharitable and unnessarily hostile. Not sure why such an innoccous expression like 'circle-back' sends people into fits of rage. There is good reason to be circumspect about heavy project-management overhead as its often misapllied, but that really has nothing to do with this jargon.
HN probably has a higher proportion of people who prefer a slightly more direct style of communication, and enjoy working with code which is much more functional IO than working with humans. If those people are coming to HN to blow off steam, that’s what you should expect - doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be disastrous if anyone tried to implement it in the real world.
Because it’s not innocuous, it’s fucking obnoxious, that’s what.
Just as I was thanking my deities of choice a few years ago that “touch basing” all the time had become uncool and all but disappeared from the workplace parlance, now all of a sudden everyone is happily “circling back” to topics of choice. It seems to be coming and going in waves.
This new hotness of a slang is also particularly shitty because it alludes to going through a few rounds of unnecessary talk before getting to the point.
It’s also one thing if one person is doing this, but if everyone and their dog keep circling back to stuff, it sounds quite idiotic.
The only thing that’s even worse is when a manager adopts military terminology while knowing nothing whatsoever about military.
A good example of this is "learnings". I have seen multiple managers use the word "learnings", usually in in phrases like, "What were our learnings from this?" Or, "What learnings can we take away?" But there's already a perfectly fine word to use: lessons! The only reason to use "learnings" instead of "lessons" is to show that you're a serious manager. It's just empty signalling.
Similarly, "ring fence". Is it really that much better than, "set aside"? Does it add any nuance, or is it just meaningless change for change's sake?
I am far more tolerant of jargon in law and technology than I am of it in business, because, in my experience, legal and technology jargon does function as shorthand, putting complex topics into a labeled box that allows the speaker to quickly make their point without having to repeat a bunch of knowledge that the audience can be assumed to be familiar with. Business jargon, on the other hand, is far more often merely different for the sake of being different.
I can’t really comment on Signalling, but the word learnings isn’t a new and modern invention. It’s in Shakespeare!
It’s also a fallacy to think that there’s a canon of ‘acceptable’ words we can choose from, nor that we are only allowed one word per concept. Language evolves over time and acquires meaning through use.
> It's the reason that the speaker used all of the tech jargon (launching a website). If they didn't do that then we would think they didn't know about websites.
To "launch" something is jargon?
Ostensibly it's to increase precision and allow experts to communicate quickly with each other. However that explaination can't explain phrases like "Ring-fence", "Let's take this offline", "360 degree feedback". All of those phrases have better simple English translations.
For example "360 degree feedback" is when a manager's direct report is asked to give feedback about their manager. In other words you give feedback about your boss, often to your boss.
It doesn't really make sense as a phrase or metaphor. It should really be 180 degree feedback because if you turn 360 degrees you're facing the same way that you started.... But that makes it even better jargon. It signals that you've been on some management training courses.
Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct.
Not if it's a boat or a plane. Otherwise, probably yes.
I don’t know what other word to use for launching a website but maybe there’s a better one.
For the general public, you could use: Make website, build website, develop website, update website, create a new page. To an expert those feel wrong because they all mean slightly different things, the jargon is being used incorrectly.
That's exactly how government people feel when you mis-use: "ring fenced budget", "allocate money to", "assign money to", "raise money for". Those all mean slightly different things and using them wrong feels wrong and marks you out as someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
My thinking is that if by "launched" we mean "deployed to production" then it's useless for the end user. If it's not deployed to production, then the user has nothing to visit so for all intents and purposes of the end user you haven't built anything (or launched).
The "portal" term is deeply overused, because it means so many different things to so many different people. Sometimes it means a special site for a particular topic; sometimes it means a landing page.
That's the problem with jargon. A lot of people hear a term, think they understand it, and then use it. They often have the wrong end of the stick, but they will not let go of their understanding of the word.
Jargon === Signaling
Signaling === Status
Status === Power
Like it or not, it's what humans are wired to do.
That said, the wise do both. For example, use the acronym, but the spell it out as well. Well, you think about those who leverage signaling the most effectively, they tend to be more inclusive in their arc.
Don't worry about it. I've learned a long time ago that HN's "virtues" are madly overstated. It's sad - and pathetic - that someone is making their own day issuing down votes for such things. And to not counter? That's just lazy.
I can't live a healthy and fulfilling life based on the mood of the pathetic and lazy.
Yeah. I know. I know. This WILL be down voted. I'm in tears.
I think the point of removing jargon is to remove the "in" and "out" crowds as much as possible, at least for the mundane aspects of government.
I think that some people will still try to make an "in" crowd in which they are a member by introducing jargon, but separating people into these groups doesn't benefit most, so let's try to fight that.
Simple words is better as it is inclusive and also makes things understandable.
“Tubular” was a term of art for surfers before the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles showed up.
It’s a normal and natural thing to develop. But it’s also normal and good to have communications professionals mandate editorial standards so that people can understand outside of the niche.
* anti pattern → bad design
* key value store → (almost always) database
On that context, "stack" means exactly the set of all those things and a few more. You can't replace it by any one of those things. The alternative is enumerating all of them (that's what people used to do), what is bad (that's why people coined the "stack" term).
> anti pattern → bad design
Hum... Now are you talking about software architecture, UI, UX, communications design? Your replacement is confusing.
> key value store → (almost always) database
It is an specific kind of database, with performance characteristics that are completely different from the relational databases that the "database" word alone implies.
A mistake I often see myself making is that as soon as I get asked to do something I stop listening and start planning how I'm going to implement the solution. In many cases my preconceived solution will not solve the actual problem, because I've not actually found what the problem is that needs to be solved.
In many cases the requester doesn't really know what they are asking for and will need some prompting to actually think it through. This requires a discussion, rather than a simplistic request to define "use case".
I don't agree - unless you're using jargon to conceal your intrinsic lack of credibility.
If you really understand a thing, then you can explain it in plain words. The use of jargon serves to conceal from both the listener and the speaker that the explanation is shallow. It's like a "code smell".
The linguistic patterns (including jargon but also more than that) peg us as part of various subcultures, as educated or not, rich or not, from Florida or not. I was interviewing with some random dude who went to Duke and he said "You remind me of my college roommate." I'd known this dude for 15 minutes: what else could there be, really, other than linguistic cues? Naturally, I was offered the job.
Jargon _can_ mean that the explanation is shallow; it just depends on which jargon employed when. Take any jargon filled non-sense - you can say equally shallow things entirely without the jargon!
Just simple words and sentences, unambiguous. ELI5. Those guys know their stuff.
It does not mean to avoid all jargon, it means you should say what you mean, not say things in a way to satisfy 300 year old rules on jurisprudence for the statute books.
http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/campaigning/examples/governmen...
"Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, 'Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.' Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, 'I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it.' But he came back a few days later to say, 'I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it.'"
— Goodstein & Goodstein, Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun (Norton, New York, 1996)
This works in reverse. If you use enough jargon then you can often convince people that you know what you are talking about, even if you don't... :)
You will rarely get called on it because people hate to admit when they don't understand something.
flicking - do something fun
trolling - studying (opposite of flicking)
troll - someone who studies
infinite troll - someone who studies a lot
Boeing had the "tin benders" for structural engineers, and the "tube benders" for the hydraulics engineers.
In one company I worked at, the marketers were the "weasels" and the engineers were the "swine". A good piece of engineering was complimented as being "swinish".
Good times
So let them learn it the hard way. If people prefer to trust someone they don't understand over making the effort to understand what they are being told in simple words, they only reveal their own ignorance.
I once was reprimanded in school (in absentia), for choosing my words to impress and not to be understood. That was probably the most important lesson I ever received.
But I think you are wrong about why jargon exists: Jargon lets us express complex ideas in a very compressed way, because, among peers, we understand exactly what is being said. It is just detrimental to effective communication with people outside our area of expertise. So yes, sometimes "NOP sledge" says it all, while with a different audience one might just skip that subject...
Second, even if it were true, that would be all the more reason to stop it, because the reason is bad. It is selfish, at the expense of others. If you make things harder for people so that life is easier for you, then you are by definition evil.
"Short words are best, and old words are best of all." --- Winston Churchill
If you stop using jargon then people assume you don't know what you're talking about. This affect is real. Your precieved credibility goes way down when you stop speaking in jargon.
It's the reason that the speaker used all of the tech jargon (launching a website). If they didn't do that then we would think they didn't know about websites.