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Comment by cs02rm0 | Hacker News Reader

How do you do that when you have an established word an entire industry understands?

Words only have the meaning we convey to them and as soon as you put more words in the mix that dilutes any clarity. We're back to the xkcd on standards.

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I am not an english speaker, for example "black list" is a concept that translates worse then "blocked list" , the first requires you have some local or historical context the last one is just clear as day.

Block has multiple meanings in English. You don't need historical context, but you'll always need context.

Sure, so what I am thinking as an example is when we create new code, say I have a feature that is available for users that have account of type A,B,C but not D or E , so I always do something like let allowedPlans = [A,B,C]. isn't this more cleared then if I named the list whiteListedPlans ? IMO is more clear and it translates better.

Bingo! You’re not the first non-native English speaker who I’ve heard say that they don’t understand blacklist but immediately understand blocklist. This is language change for the better.

My idea was that if you use more clear words then it is easy to replace more unclear ones.

Random thought: Who will adopt faster, the younger programers, or older?

In my day we'd feed the Spinning Jenny punch cards all day long.

We should also stop using ROBOT which means "forced labor" (slave) in Czech.

Not sure if the word robot offends some groups but if you can use a less confusing word then use that, like if you want to talk about a robot that has a human like you can be more clear by using the word android or synth.

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