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Comment by rtorr | Hacker News Reader

“Stillborn” is a pretty awful term to use for software.

Mea culpa. Reworded.

Why is that? It conveys the DOA meaning pretty well.

Generally, your metaphors should not rely on comparison to a pretty traumatic event that has happened to quite a few people, many of whom might be around you without you knowing.

Sure. I guess then you shouldn’t even use the word “dead”, as plenty of people have lost close relatives which is a pretty traumatic event.

Just letting you know the reality that a lot of people view "stillborn" events as particularly traumatic. I'm not going to spend a lot of time arguing about this because it's a pretty simple point.

It's up to you to choose what kind of person you want to be, I don't have control over what you say.

I think the difference is that the term "Dead" is used in a lot of different contexts. E.g. Battery is dead. Stillborn is not, and it mainly associated used in one very traumatic context.

How about “miscarriage of justice”?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage_of_justice

DOA is a metaphor too, literally referring to people arriving at the ER too late.

Now that I think of it, does anyone know if "abort" is among the computing terms to be avoided (like master, black list or sanity check)?

None of these should be avoided, as long as they are accurate terms.

Anyone who is avoiding "master, black list or sanity check" probably thinks abortion is super awesome and that the term "abort" should never be stigmatized.

Best not to worry about such silly things and keep writing code.

I don't know of anyone who "thinks abortion is super awesome"...

In any case, the primary meaning of 'abort' is more general, so it shouldn't be compared to the metaphorical use of 'stillborn'.

The original meaning of abort is miscarriage/miscarry, other uses are “metaphorical”.

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