Re: On computerese

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Holger,

hohe72@posteo.de wrote on Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 12:38:37AM +0000:

> BTW, what's that: 'computerese'?

An (IMHO charming, even if mildly uncommon) synonym for "technical
jargon used colloquially among computer professionals".  Originally,
it was used for "instructions issued to a computer in a formal
language", but that original meaning has faded away almost
completely nowadays.

It's not even a witty neologism just invented by Doug, but has been
in use for more than sixty years:

 https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Quotations?textTermText0=computerese

Here we witness once again a typical feature of human languages.
In contrast to programming languages, there is no such thing in
natural languages as "objective meaning", but it's all about
communication from one sender to one or more recipients, and what
may seem expressive and pleasing style to one non-native recipient
(in this case, myself) may feel puzzling and obscure to another
recipient, even if both recipients come from almost the same
cultural background.

As if to prove the point, observe that Kusoneko perceived a
pejorative or disparaging undertone in the word, which i did not;
quite to the contrary, i called using the word "charming";
yet reconsidering, i do see their point as well.


That said, is there a use case for "concatenate"?
Who knows.  The examples the OED cites for "catenate" range
from 1623 to 1794, and those for "concatenate" from 1471 to 1872.
According to the OED, the one prefixed by "con" is about ten times
more common overall than the one without, in particular after 1830,
and even more so after 1940.
Languages change.  For the better?  Maybe not always.

Is "shorter with the same meaning" (as in this case) better?
Does it remain better when public usage shifts away from it,
even if it shifts for bad reasons?  Even when ultimately,
it may become rare enough for some people to feel surprised
by the shorter, more unusual version, in the worst case no
longer even understandiing it?

Style is hardly an easy topic to judge.

(I must be out of my mind to muse about such things in the presence
 of Doug, who, among many other reasons, is famous as a technical
 writer.)

Yours,
  Ingo