Considering that TFA pokes fun at the word in the very first footnote, I took this comment to be mostly in jest. But if we’re going to be serious about it, technical jargon is really only appropriate when the speaker is 100% sure the audience 100% understands it.
There is sometimes a problem (I wouldn't use personal terms to describe it, but still) where technical terms are slung about without regard for whether people understand them. That’s poor communication, and as a bad side-effect, it encourages people to misuse the words in ways that don’t match the formal definitions.
In any event, if a comment is criticizing the article for using the word “isomorphism,” we could quite fairly ask if there is a bijective between algorithm and data structure, and whether the morphisms preserve behaviour.
> But if we’re going to be serious about it, technical jargon is really only appropriate when the speaker is 100% sure the audience 100% understands it.
I disagree. Half the reason I come here is to be exposed to new ideas or concepts. This isn't a lecture, I'll gladly take time to learn about a new concept if it seems relevant.
Fair enough, and here is an interesting thing: In a talk, if you stop to explain every technical term, you break up the flow and make it tedious for those who know the words.
But in a web article, we have hyperlinks, footnotes, asides, and other devices for allowing some readers to skim and others to dive in.
So to me, the choice for whether to use a word in an essay is different than the choice for whether to use a word in a talk at a conference, which is different than the choice for whether to use a word in a conversation where I am familiar with the participants.
Since we're on the subject of recursion, there is a problem when somebody uses a term that they only understand 90%. Somebody else reads that and understands 90%, and then they use, and then another person reads it...
And then we arrive in the current situation where people use terms like "rainbow table" or "HFT" to describe who knows what.
With that standard, we'd all be stuck at grunting.
Words exist for a reason. They allow precision, brevity, and – as Reginald so often shows – beauty. I expect readers to be willing to right-click an unknown word and quickly learn its meaning.
I'd also expect programmers to know what isomorphic means. Heck, you could even guess it: iso, like the standards. Morph as in morphology, "shape".
There is sometimes a problem (I wouldn't use personal terms to describe it, but still) where technical terms are slung about without regard for whether people understand them. That’s poor communication, and as a bad side-effect, it encourages people to misuse the words in ways that don’t match the formal definitions.
In any event, if a comment is criticizing the article for using the word “isomorphism,” we could quite fairly ask if there is a bijective between algorithm and data structure, and whether the morphisms preserve behaviour.
If not... Perhaps TFA is at fault.