Can you guys shed some light?
Why is discussion better than dialogue? Work with better than collaborate? Concentrate on better than focus on?
Another subtlety in English is that words with Germanic roots feel more direct and simple while those with Latin roots feel flowery and pretentious so the former are often preferred. E.g. ask/inquire, answer/response. It's not always true, and some words may still be out of date.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_and_Latinat...
The Plain English campaign - whose work has been excellent over the decades - and diversity in CS hiring, have hopefully broken the worst parts of the language barrier.
[1] - silly example: while most of the office-working world would write a "memo", in CS Jargonese it was a "minute". To this day I have no idea why the distinction was important.
Ooh, That might explain why it was hard for me to understand!
I'm a Spaniard, so latin-derived words are usually familiar. That's what's keeping me from perceiving them as literary, since their Spanish counterpart is in my 'common speech register', so to speak.
For example, 'dialogue' to many people means a dialogue box on a computer screen. So that word is ambiguous. But a discussion has a primary meaning that is what the writer desires to use.
Particularly for non-native speakers, using secondary meanings of words can be confusing.
> The dialog box (also called dialogue box (non-U.S. English), ...
This is a British government website, so "dialogue box" might not be uncommon.
Some of us distinguish between program (software) and programme (a collection of projects)
In the same way, the instructions controlling a computer are a "program"; the TV drama with the dialogue is a "programme".
/me British English speaker (obv)
(This would also, if you squint a bit, serve as an example of "dialog" being short for dialog box.)
"Focus" is a metaphor.
"Work with" is at a considerably simpler level of English education than "collaborate".
A "dialog" was originally a literary work with people responding to each other, so it's a bit more pretentious.
Also, a dialog has a slightly more argumentative feel than a discussion - there is more of a sense of opposition.
"We had a quick discussion to make sure we were on the same page and then had lunch." Dialog would be weird here.
"We are trying to start a dialog between one side and the other."
Though I guess that used in an international context (say, between countries) discussion would sound stranger than dialogue, and there is usually some degree of opposition between countries.
Some of them are definitely debatable but that's the general trend.
What is the line between analogies and etymology?
Not really arguing with the specific choice, but considering words formed by analysis as harder to understand is a concept I've never seen before.
"Simpler and less flowery" is obviously not very well defined but it's also definitely a real spectrum. One of those things that needs taste and judgement.