shorter

I've sometimes heard it's "catenate" not "concatenate".

Do they mean the same thing?

As for cat, the utility, I'm afraid we'll never stop seeing people doing

   cat file|prog1|prog2

even when it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

If it did, I might as well do

   cat file|cat|prog|cat|prog2|cat -

I mean, why not? It "looks nicer" than

   prog file|prog2 or 
   prog < file|prog2

Programmers love their cats.