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Comment by bilalq | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to think I minimize the bleedover of corporate/profession-related speech into my daily life, but "orthogonal" and "non-trivial" were just not a standard part of my vocabulary before college. Over a decade later, I find myself saying them a lot.

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Ways to say: 1. "that's not what we're talking about" and 2. "this is fucking important you idiot"

are always valuable :D

That sounds more like maths jargon that has bled into office speak (to my delight, but I'm a mathematician).

Those are words I use a lot and I was starting to wonder if I the office jargon was bleeding too much on my personal life. Then I read your comment and realised I started using them after attending a math course at the University. I loved my teacher. Thanks for the memories.

> I'd like to think I minimize the bleedover of corporate/profession-related speech into my daily life, but "orthogonal" and "non-trivial" were just not a standard part of my vocabulary before college. Over a decade later, I find myself saying them a lot.

As a mathematician, both of those terms are common in my technical and, therefore, everyday speech. If it helps, feel free to think of yourself, not as using corporate speech, but as using technical mathematical terms.

That makes me wary. As any mathematician knows, "trivial" means solvable. "Nontrivial" means no one has solved it yet, but no one knows any good reason why it shouldn't be solvable in principle. And "decidedly nontrivial" means no one has a fucking clue whether it's solvable or not; best not try, unless you're Terence Tao or somebody, then... maybe.

So if I were your boss and you came to me casually describing a problem as "nontrivial" I'd be like... "so is the time frame gonna be years or decades?"

That's pretty much exactly what it means in software too? A trivial task is one that you think you know how to do. A nontrivial problem is one which sounds like it should be doable, but you don't immediately know what steps will be required, and until you look into it further it may take anywhere from days to decades.

"Trivial" in software means easy. So "non-trivial" just means not easy. As such whether or not something actually is trivial or not will vary person to person.

The use of "orthogonal" is now common in SCOTUS oral arguments, both from the practitioners and the justices. Not infrequent in the intermediate appellate courts either. I do an imaginary eye roll whenever I hear it in those contexts.

Why? The entire point of a court case is to settle an argument over a specific case or controversy. So if something is orthogonal or tangential (pick your math metaphor), that means something.

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