Comment by tome
8 years ago
> What if there is a font named Hack and a language
Then one gets confused between them. Next month a story on HN will be titled "New version of Hack released". That's confusing.
> (which, FWIK, exists as well)?
Yes I know. That doesn't weaken my point!
> Would it hurt anyone to use context to know which of the two is talked about?
Of course. Every time one has to spend effort additionally clarifying one's meaning (or worse, someone else's meaning)causes a bit of "hurt". The more popular the project the more the hurt compounds.
A case in point: all the people on HN who click through to discussions on ML thinking it was about the language only to find it's an article about machine learning, or vice versa.
> In fact if it's "extremely common" then already there's no such concern. Now it just has N+1 uses.
I didn't mean it has N different uses as a proper name. I mean that it's a commonly used word as a non-proper-name that represents one concept or a collection of very similar concepts.
Ornithologists shouldn't call their new font "Wing" and we shouldn't call our new font "Hack". The other way round would be fine.
>Then one gets confused between them. Next month a story on HN will be titled "New version of Hack released". That's confusing.
For 1 split second. Every year or so. And only if there's no other context in the title (e.g. www.facebook.com).
>Of course. Every time one has to spend effort additionally clarifying one's meaning (or worse, someone else's meaning)causes a bit of "hurt".
It also exercises the brain for the broader world, where things are not always humanly managed and/or cleanly designed, and only need the least possible effort.