Two high-falutin' terms to avoid here ...
Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)
Posts: 23,514
... unless you intend to communicate what the terms actually mean.
use case
I see this term bandied about a lot in the forum. Unfortunately, it's almost always used as an fancy synonym for the simpler, "use." A use case is a formal structure (i.e. model) that defines how a system and its users interact to perform a particular task or accomplish a particular goal. A typical application is a diagram or flow chart showing how users interact with a website to reach the information they're after. So it's less correct to say, "This new-fangled processor can be applied to many new use cases," when you mean, "This new-fangled processor has many new uses."
conflate
This term is almost never used in the first post of a thread. It's almost always used as a high-brow way to respond critically to something someone else has posted. The dictionary definition is: combine (two or more texts, ideas, etc.) into one. It's not a synonym for "confuse," which is how it's often used. As an example, avoid saying, "You're conflating threads and processes," when you mean, "You're confusing threads with processes." Yeah, I know: the first seems less confrontational which, I suspect, is why it gets overused.
So the lesson is this: keep it simple, and be direct, by avoiding unnecessary jargon.
Thank you,
-Phil
use case
I see this term bandied about a lot in the forum. Unfortunately, it's almost always used as an fancy synonym for the simpler, "use." A use case is a formal structure (i.e. model) that defines how a system and its users interact to perform a particular task or accomplish a particular goal. A typical application is a diagram or flow chart showing how users interact with a website to reach the information they're after. So it's less correct to say, "This new-fangled processor can be applied to many new use cases," when you mean, "This new-fangled processor has many new uses."
conflate
This term is almost never used in the first post of a thread. It's almost always used as a high-brow way to respond critically to something someone else has posted. The dictionary definition is: combine (two or more texts, ideas, etc.) into one. It's not a synonym for "confuse," which is how it's often used. As an example, avoid saying, "You're conflating threads and processes," when you mean, "You're confusing threads with processes." Yeah, I know: the first seems less confrontational which, I suspect, is why it gets overused.
So the lesson is this: keep it simple, and be direct, by avoiding unnecessary jargon.
Thank you,
-Phil
Comments
I have to disagree with you!
I have NEVER EVER considered "use case" or "conflate" to be high-falutin.
:nerd:
They are however, as Phil points out, often used incorrectly. Either through ignorance or laziness of thought.
There are use cases for "conflate" where is is pretty much a a synonym for "confuse," That is when pointing out that someone has combined two or more, possibly unrelated, possibly contradictory, ideas and come up with a wrong result.
Anyway I have conflates for breakfast almost every morning
-Phil
"In software and systems engineering, a use case is a list of actions or event steps typically defining the interactions between a role (known in the Unified Modeling Language as an actor) and a system to achieve a goal. The actor can be a human or other external system."
Well OK, we already have a word for that. Why not just call an interaction an "interaction"?
I still think it's downright stupid. Not " high-falutin", just stupid. Like some kind of MBA speak invading the world of computer science.
When the old members become disgruntled, who will provide forum support?
When improperly hyphenated, "high-falutin" looks like some manner of dietary intolerance (e.g. "Are these cookies falutin-free?"). Sorry to concatenate my grammatical thoughts to the thread.
Some topics will always have higher priority to the forum host and guests than others; sometimes we might give a heads-up as we organise, especially for "very old" members. Sometimes we may not be able to.
Either way, we try to keep things tidy and appropriate for all guests here and value your support.
On a side note, I kind of miss the old back and forth where personalities came through the text. It was a bit like soap opera between intelligent "disgruntled" people.
It appears that I've applied reverse evolution to the term by reinserting the catalytic hyphen (viz. screw driver => screw-driver => screwdriver), along with the apostrophe that denotes a missing "g". (Etymology suggests that the word derives from "high fluting.")
Regarding the sinking: I'm not convinced that a meta topic involving the forum itself is inappropriate content; but whatever. Language is a fascinating subject, whether it be computer language or natural language.
-Phil
Thing is, I was on the verge of giving up any hope of language purity when the Oxford English Dictionary accepted wysiwyg as a word back in the day. Anyone recall what wysiwyg means?
But then the OED accepted a pictograph as a word:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2015
I don't care anymore. If there are no rules and nobody understands anybody anymore. Good luck.
BTW Where is everyone getting their technical "fixes" these days?
It's not on this forum any more. Been dead as a door nail for some time now.
-Phil
>Anyone recall what wysiwyg means?
Heater - Think Different!
"Use case"? Isn't it 2017 an not 1997? User Stories vs. Use Case; To be Agile or not to be Agile, that is the question.
Generally someone who is begging the question is not actually asking any question, rather they are making an assertion about the truth of something. And what has begging got to do with it anyway?
It's a phrase crying out to be misused as it makes no sense in the first place.
@KeithE,
What do you mean "Think Different!" ?
The name of that forum reminds me of a phrase I heard many years ago that should never be used: "Extinguish interior illumination"
Thing is. I have been in Mountain View the whole summer. Up to my eye balls in work. But then when I did make it to the local Irish pub I had more than enough "technical fix" there.
Folks around there included a few expat British chip designers. A guy who designs atomic clocks. An old guy still working with electronics at SLAC because the young generation can't handle high voltage systems. A woman that worked for Apple when it was young. And an assortment of young guys from Google and various start ups.
I have not seen so many geeks and nerds in a bar since I was at uni many decades ago.
Now I'm back home and starting to thing about a project for the long, cold, dark winter ahead in Finland. Inspired by Chip I'm of on a tangent exploring Verilog, SpinalHDL and FPGA's.
Now, if I can just get a couple of P1V cogs on an FPGA together with a RISC V processor core....
I found it amusing that they named their database "CockroachDB". A cockroach is a bug. I was there to report a serious bug.
To their credit they fixed said bug very quickly after I showed how to reproduce it. CockroachDB is a pretty amazing piece of work.
Cunning critters, roaches. They will be here long after the human race has committed suicide.
It was a clue. WYSIWYG was a Steve Jobs-ism. Or at least he popularized it. I figured that you really did know - what you see is what you get. Macintosh, Postscript,...
Link says:
But until Steve Jobs started using this at Apple it was probably not well known. I guess the biggest anti-WYSIWYG is Donald Knuth and his TeX ;-)
Heater here's a whole rathole for you:
https://github.com/cr1901/spi_tb
Just an example of formal verification that we can all do at home with free tools. Clifford seems to have RISC V covered, so maybe you can do the first formally verified propeller core ;-)
Ah sorry. I was not clear. Of course I knew what "wysiwyg" means. My question was "Anyone recall what wysiwyg means?" I should perhaps have said "anyone else". It just seems to be a term that has dropped out of use. Nobody prints stuff much anymore and when they do it's a web page which never comes out as you see it!
wysiwyg is a stupid idea for creating documents anyway,
Actually I'm running Clifford's picorv32 core on my DE0 Nano. I runs along at 100MHz and takes about 8% of the space in the Nano. So I thought there might be room for a few Cogs in there as well.
I'm not into any formal verification. I'm just hacking up peripherals to hang on the picorv32 bus. All in an attempt to familiarize myself with Verilog and SpinalHDL. I just use Icarus Verilog or the Verilator for simulation testing. Having been away for months I have now forgotten it all. I'll be trying to get back into it over the winter.
https://github.com/ZiCog/xoro
Use case is dumb. Go away please.
Sinking is lame and restricting topics in the general discussion area only makes people go to other forums for community. Then they aren't hanging around here, seeing new threads pop up and answering questions. Moderation is of course a key component to a healthy forum but stick to politics, religion, bad words and general meanness in the GENERAL section. Others should of course be kept topical and relevant to their section.
Just my $0.02 and worth at least half of that.