On: Commonly used idioms in the tech industry

[sorokod]

Some non idioms I find annoying:

* "We" instead of "I". on StackOverflow "how do we reverse a string?"

* "showstopper", no matter how trivial a thing is, it will be a showstopper for someone: "the lack of a dark theme is a showstopper"

* "workflow", no matter how trivial an activity is, it will be someone's workflow

[elwell → sorokod]

> "We" instead of "I"

What about "we" instead of "you"? E.g., "Can we change the color of this button to blue?"... "Yes, I can do that."

It used to bother me, but when you're in the position of telling other people what to do, I suppose it sounds less demanding.

[sorokod → elwell]

I see it more in the spirit of "how are we feeling today". Some sort of false comradery.

[denton-scratch → sorokod]

I hate that! My reply is often of the form "I'm feeling fine, but you must speak for yourself."

[commandlinefan → sorokod]

> no matter how trivial a thing is, it will be a showstopper for someone

I used to work for a big web site that produced standardized requirements documents ahead of every project. Part of the standard was the "flexibility matrix": the PM or "stakeholder" who was producing the requirements document was supposed to identify whether scope or timeline was most flexible. Of course, for about five years running after the standard document template came out, every project was "least flexible" on timeline and "most flexible" on scope.

We finally started calling them on their impossible timelines and tried flexing the scope by pushing some of the vague requirements off to later releases. The result? They added another column to the "flexibility matrix" called "resources", as in they were willing to hire more people to meet all the requirements in the mandated timeline.

That was also not true.

[nharada → sorokod]

I often see "we" on internal documents written by one person -- I think it comes from the convention in academic papers where you'd use "we" to refer to the researcher(s), even if it's just one author. I don't personally mind it in this context.

[denton-scratch → nharada]

I was taught in science at school that it was incorrect to use the first-person-singular in lab write-ups. "A sample was heated over a bunsen, and it was found on cooling to have turned white".

[nharada → denton-scratch]

There's an interesting answer and linked article here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2948

[sorokod → sorokod]

Ah, forgot "community". No matter how loosely related a group of people is, someone will call it a community, e.g. "the HN community"

[cdcarter → sorokod]

> "We" instead of "I". on StackOverflow "how do we reverse a string?"

I usually notice this with english as a second language speakers, it's probably a more innocent mistake than people choosing a word like "workflow" or "bandwidth".

[duckmysick → sorokod]

I catch myself overusing the word "workflow". Any good replacements? I tried "activity" and "task" but they don't feel natural to me.

[sorokod → duckmysick]

For me workflow implies something substantial and so appropriate occasionally. Activity, task or just a way to do things works too.