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Comment by tpoacher | Hacker News Reader

I am extremely pleasantly surprised with the results for "source codes". I thought it'd be full of people making the grammatical error of using "source code" in the plural.

It is happening so often these days that I get more and more frustrated by it...

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This is typically the kind of mistake a non native English speaker could make and maybe indicative of a more international community.

At least these are "codes" not "cods", as I've seen written in a project I worked with. Real mistake by a French programmer, not a typo. Reasoning: programme->program so code->cod. In French there is no difference in pronunciation, and spell check didn't catch it. This one is obvious and funny, but you can get some weird English when you apply foreign rules to it.

does it really matter though?

We're engineers (or academics), pedantry is occasionally a hill we die on.

Trying to be precise in language allows you to communicate an idea the most effective way, imo, and at the end of the day that's you're goal. At least it should be in technical writing. If the reader has to pause when they see "codes" instead of "code" because it's just a bit off then that is a tiny failing in your communication.

Definitely not the end of the world, definitely not something to be an asshole about, but it is something I would maybe politely correct if I knew the person well enough.

Also don't take this for me saying I'm perfect in my written communication. I still don't know how to use commas and I've had them explained to me from all grammatical standpoints multiple times. Trying is all you can do.

Comp sci vs the natural sciences have an interesting split on this (though blurring more recently). Computer science tends to use "code" as a collective noun. Traditional usage in the natural sciences and parts of engineering is that "a code" (singular) is a single routine or piece of software to carry out some kind of numerical calculation or simulation. Then "codes" is just the normal plural when talking about more than one of them. So you find papers talking about things like "a new code for simulating preheating" [1] or "benchmarking simulation codes" [2].

[1] https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2008/11/009

[2] https://doi.org/10.1109/PAC.2003.1289206

That's very interesting, I've limited exposure to programming in the natural sciences so I've only really experienced the collective noun usage.

I had thought "a code" and then "codes" may have come down from the punch card era of programming where as you said it would be more of single routine for a specific computation which I guess then would have filtered down into scientific computing as programming evolved through fortran and others and now it seems it's all merging back together.

To my surprise you used you're instead of your in a comment about precise language.

I said I wasn't perfect! But yeah I saw it, unfortunately my edit timer had ran out.

Language changes with use. What has frustrated me since high school is when people get so pedantic over the natural progression of language.

Conservative to the bone I guess.

While the lines are often blurred, emerging idioms vs language errors are not simply a case of wanting kids to get off the lawn. It is about making a distinction between useful and harmful semantics in communication.

I would argue this is similar to the difference between accent vs pronunciation. People often conflate the two as similar. But you having a different accent makes your speech beautiful. Whereas you having a different pronunciation makes your speech unintelligible.

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