this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 154 points 2 days ago (30 children)

I also hate the way "algorithm" has taken over the public consciousness. You can find people unironically saying "I don't want any algorithm in my social media feed", which is a nonsensical statement.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 2 days ago (8 children)

People are onto something though - there's been a noticeable shift from social media just showing you your feed in a chronological manner to it showing you personally tailored content that shuffles on each refresh and aims to hook you into endless doomscrolling. I understand perfectly well what's an algorithm, but good luck explaining to people that it's not that specific thing.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is really, "what techs call it" and "what non-techs call it".

As a tech, I usually know what someone means when they "app".

It's "glitch" that drives me mad though. Glitch sounds like a ghost caused the error one tine only, versus some lazy coder.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (5 children)

The other day I realized they did that because its APPle. I have no evidence but I'm sticking with it

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

The braces are nice touch.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

App is actually correct for all but the OS.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

$ sudo appt-get install app

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

chmod +x myApp.appImage

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I very much hate the word app. That's probably my biggest boomer trait.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 days ago (4 children)

See also the client camera movement guide:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Client cameras love everyone!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

A Pan-o-rama

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This is ridiculous. There's no way a client calls a dolly a "pan".

That's obviously zooming.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

A long time ago I joined a new remote-first company and in my first month they made an event where they brought in all employees from all over the world for a week at a farm hotel for a mix or meetings and leisure activities.

In one specific meeting the CEO was talking app this app that and I was very confused. The product was a server side program that had a web client, an electron app and two native mobile apps. But the CEO was talking about things that didn't make sense for those apps.

At some point I interrupted the meeting and asked for clarification: what are you talking about when you say app? It's not the mobile apps?

The CEO made a funny face and mentioned an engineer. I looked at him and he had a smug face and said something along the lines of "well, go on, explain it". CEO then explained he was talking about the new big project, which was basically an extension system for the server product - and the extensions would be called apps.

That night I found that engineer at the hotel bar and asked more details about it. Turns out he was the team lead on this project and he hated the term "apps" for it and had been very vocal about it before, saying among other things that it would cause confusion with the client apps we have. Most of the company agreed with him at the time but the CEO demanded it be named apps anyway.

These days everyone there thinks that naming it apps was the right call, but I always hated having to refer to them as "server extension app" to avoid any confusion, specially because I often worked on integrations with third party tools and those tools also had their own stuff called apps so instead of just saying something like "the Kabum extension" I had to say "the ChaChin server Kabum app" (as in this example's context there would also be multiple Kabum clients and ChaChin clients that would all be known as apps too)

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

And now the kids don't know what a file path is anymore. Legit my wife is a professor, and she gets adeer in the headlight look when she is helping students debug code and she mentions a file path not being right in there code.

Serious response, no joke... what's a file path?

These are sophomores and Juniors in college.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

Yikes. Blame iPhone (and Android) hiding file structure in most every app

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Meh every generation has its quirks. My college class in 2000 spent 1 whole week going over the Windows Start menu...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

All the education invalidated by the release of Windows 8

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago (2 children)

These are sophomores and Juniors in college.

... Who grew up in a world where computer internals were abstracted away so you never needed to know what a file was or even that they exist. I wouldn't know what a file was either if I didn't grow up in exactly the right time frame and have a dad who hoarded DOS PCs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

I lucked out having a dad who's into computers so I had the chance to tinker with his old stuff since I was a little bwoah.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

Oh no, I get why they don't know what one is. It just makes teaching coding to them very difficult.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I fought hard against that for years. I still only use 'app' for phone programs, but I stopped correcting people every time they used the term for anything else. It isn't technically wrong, but it grates on my nerves for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Language evolves. Why is a computer program not an “app(lication)” exactly?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

A lot of times, the literal definition varies from what people think of when they hear a thing. We call a lot of similar things words that don't fully make sense but since other people will know what it means, it's useful. When everything is an app, piles of specifics are glossed over. That probably doesn't matter when talking to a non-developer, but sometimes it might. Those of us in software like the specificity because it tells us many things we might otherwise have to ask several questions to learn about. So yeah, sometimes it matters, other times it won't.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Oh, it is. It is... Sigh.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It isn’t technically wrong

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I thought I made that clear. I just don't like it.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If someone told me to use the fdisk app I'd be confused.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Use the ls app.

Then use the cd app.

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