

Ask HN: What's your least favorite tech word? Mine's "non-trivial". - ncarlson

Any time I hear someone mutter "non-trivial" a little piece of me dies inside. What other art/profession uses that word?<p>I can't imagine an automotive engineer describing a new car engine as non-trivial or a painter describing his work as non-trivial.<p>Anyways, what words wind you guys up?<p>Edit: Happy Monday, btw.
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gdp
I have to step in here to defend "non-trivial".

Perhaps it is abused as a term by the population at large, but I'm reasonably
sure it has its roots in theoretical computer science and maths. It has a
meaning that is distinct from "complex". It means that something requires
something more than pure mechanical verification or straightforward
inspection.

A painter could use "non-trivial" in a sensible way. How much effort is
involved in X? Well, it's non-trivial, because it involves more than having a
look. It isn't estimating the effort, it is instead a binary classification -
trivial and non-trivial.

Finally, to answer your question, I don't dislike individual words. I only
dislike them once they are combined into sentences.

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DanielStraight
I'm a big fan of "non-trivial" myself, especially after reading
[http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engine...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engineers_feasibility/)

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yan
Enterprise.

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MikeMacMan
And its evil twin, Mission Critical

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jacquesm
Ah, but Mission Critical actually has a place. When you're working for NASA,
you operate a nuclear plant or some other outfit like that.

Everywhere else it's just pretending you do something important.

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jacquesm
paradigm shift

leverage

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billswift
Leverage is often irritatingly misused, but can be useful.

Paradigm shift - someone should invent a time machine and go back to shoot
Kuhn's mother before he was born.

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jacquesm
For that to happen we'd need a parad-- never mind.

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gaius
Idempotent.

But non-trivial does have a specific meaning: it means that we don't have any
code already written or proven technique that we can simply reuse for or apply
to this problem, and some new knowledge will have to be synthesized, and
there's a risk in making any estimates of time/cost until more is known.

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chuffwaffle
What's wrong with idempotent? It has a precise, useful meaning

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gaius
It's often misused. Along with orthogonal.

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Chronos
_shudder_ We have a business relationship with a financial company based out
of Germany, and their system (which sits on top of replicated Oracle) defines
"idempotent" to mean "our database already has a cache of the answer we
already gave you". Oh, and they gave us a JAR file of client code that does
client-side failover, with a fixed 8-second delay to account for the Oracle
replication lag between sites. _No_ coordination between different instances
of our client. So now, when one client fails over due to a connectivity blip,
the other clients get cached error messages (logically equivalent to 404 Not
Found). "Idempotent", indeed.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Quantum, in almost any context. I do use non-trivial, but I'm a mathematician,
and I refer you to Feynman's comments about tthe use of 'trivial'.

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TallGuyShort
It's not limited to tech people, but I do hear them say it a lot:
"irregardless".

edit: Oh and let's not forget Scott Adam's favorite: Synergy

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DanWood
"irregarldess" burns my ears, too. I also want to fight when I hear someone
say "often times" (redundant) or "I don't disagree with you" (passive-
aggressive double negative)

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zackola
kludge synergy/synergistic/synergize proactive xml

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jacquesm
No, not kludge, please :)

It's one of the best tech words out there, it is very specific and there is no
other good way of saying it without using a whole pile of words.

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zackola
It is a good word. I'm not saying people shouldn't use it. It is an ugly, ugly
word to me - I hate the sound of it, which is part of why it is my least
favorite. It's one of those words that sound like what they mean to me. What
is that called anyway? Not onomatopoeia.

I also tend to hate it because I can tell before even starting to fix the
kludge, it's likely to involve an large overhaul instead of a small bug fix.

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jacquesm
I think that's how most kludges are born. Someone is given the assignment to
repair something, they figure out that it will take them way too much time
doing it the 'proper' way (their boss might simply not give them a time budget
large enough to fix it well) so they resort to a kludge.

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bddbbdb
Tech/business jargon: "leverage" (when used as a verb) anywhere: "utilize"
(when used as a word)

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jlintz
"the cloud" please make it go away, it's totally the next buzzword to replace
'web 2.0'

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ganley
There's a joke that when an engineer says 'nontrivial,' he means 'impossible.'

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billswift
The joke I heard was that it meant he didn't want to be bothered about it.

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moe
Turnkey Solution

(My brain always translates to turkey inducing...)

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davidw
"Trivial" itself can sound quite snotty, said in the right way.

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screwLoose
'webinar' has been annoying me for years now.

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Maro
synergy

(Go watch 'In good company')

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michaelcampbell
"Configurable"

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odvious
revolutionary

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lamby
"Realtime"

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yagibear
disambiguate

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jsm386
dead simple

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yannis
Erlang!

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tdonia
savvy

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electronslave
Drill. Like "drill down".

It seems that trepanation might be a good response to someone using this word.

"Could you drill down into my data set and shift some paradigms?" "Yes, and
while I'm at it, I'll equalize your humours." _WHIRR_ "Indeed."

