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Comment by CyberRabbi | Hacker News Reader

I know it’s slightly imprudent but I initially discount the opinion of anyone who uses the word “performant.” I know many others do as well. Language matters. Use precise language that has a specific meaning. Anyone can make a vague claim that something is “performant”

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"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I genuinely didn’t think a negative opinion about a marketing word would be this controversial but point well taken. Last time I criticize presentation.

A more engaging summary of the article: Google engineer proposes changes in caching algorithm based on observations from "millions of servers and clients", arguing for improved performance both on low-end (phone) and high-end (hundreds of gigabytes of ram) devices.

Probably would have made a good top-level comment. My comment is about the poor taste of the word “performant”

Performant is a pretty common word in technology, and has been since at least 2003 when I first heard it. It's used in the same vein as "scaleable" - in both cases, suggests the positive nature of the performance and scaling.

"performs better" the dictionary will catch up

edit - apparently oxford dictionary has it already as "performs well"

“Performs better” is just as vague. What does it mean to perform? What does it mean to do it better? Most of the time people actually mean “more efficient CPU usage”

for this case where the thing is a cache and the description a headline, "more performant" seems perfectly cromulent. it says here's a cache that does all the stuff a cache is expected to do well but better

Performant is problematic because it's tech jargon that is only now gaining grudging acceptance as a word in the overall population.

It's not wrong, but it's best avoided if you want to avoid pedants waving their King's English stick at you.

FYI “problematic” is also a vague and essentially meaningless term that is no more specific than “bad.”

English has lots of words that mean mostly the same thing. Do you seethe at every entry in a thesaurus? How does one determine which word is blessed by the higher minded beings you choose to exclusively associate with?

I don’t usually seethe, it’s more like remote embarrassment. I think there is a German word for that. I often recommend a “non-hire” as well.

Edit: I changed “non hire” to “non-hire” because I have no personal issue with acknowledging my usage of improper punctuation. Why should it be controversial to point out usage of improper vocabulary in others?

FYI, non-hire is the type of phrase that should be hyphenated.

Problematic is just fine, brah-- with usage dating to the late 17th century and with a pretty clear connotation of "presenting numerous problems" instead of just being undesirable/bad.

I suggest "performy" and "problemy" as shorter. (Although many people seem to think length a virtue in words) And instead of "more performant" – "performore"?!

Take it up with the people who coined problematic 4 centuries ago.

Seems like a very proactive development

So, we need words that say on what dimension it is performing better.

I hereby coin “latencyant” and “throughputant”.

If a system is highly latencyant, does that mean it performs well in terms of latency, or does it mean it exhibits high latency?

I was thinking “lower latency”. Is there a suffix that means “less of”? “Timeless” is already taken...

Well, there are hypo- and hyper-.

Now I like hypolatent and throughputful.

latencyless and throughputful?

latencyette and throughputous?

latencycule and throughputty?

what about hit rate and time and space efficiency? i think "cachy" says it all - the cachiest cache

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