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In general, I hate how tech things reuse regular words. Usually it seems like no big deal at first because it’s a niche thing for a few nerds, but now that tech is “eating the world” it is actually damaging language.

I heard a spoken ad on the radio the other day warning people about the dangers of phishing with absolutely zero context to clarify that they weren’t talking about fishing. I felt sad to realize that is now the dominant meaning of the word.

I write a lot of open source software, and always take the time to think of a new name, usually some type of portmanteau rather than just calling it something like “java” or “python.”




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