Link tags: jargon

The 3 Laws of Serverless - Burke Holland

“Serverless”, is a buzzword. We can’t seem to agree on what it actaully means, so it ends up meaning nothing at all. Much like “cloud” or “dynamic” or “synergy”. You just wait for the right time in a meeting to drop it, walk to the board and draw a Venn Diagram, and then just sit back and wait for your well-deserved promotion.

That’s very true, and I do not like the term “serverless” for the rather obvious reason that it’s all about servers (someone else’s servers, that is). But these three principles are handy for figuring out if you’re building with in a serverlessy kind of way:

1. You have no knowledge of the underlying system where your code runs.
2. Scaling is an intrinsic attribute of the technology; so much so that it just happens automatically.
3. You only pay for what you use.

Abstraction; scale; consumption.

How to speak Silicon Valley: decoding tech bros from microdosing to privacy | US news | The Guardian

Every one of these is chef’s kiss.

Getting help from your worst enemy

Onboarding. Reaching out. In terms of. Synergy. Bandwidth. Headcount. Forward planning. Multichannel. Going forward. We are constantly bombarded and polluted with nonsense speak. These words and phrases snag and attach themselves to our vocabulary like sticky weeds.

Words become walls.

I love this post from Ben on the value of plain language!

We’re not dumbing things down by using simple terms. We’re being smarter.

Read on for the story of the one exception that Ben makes—it’s a good one.

Use the words normal people use

When you’re struggling to write something that sounds clear and sounds human (two of the essential basics of a good blog post, I’d argue), just use the words normal people would use.

John Spencer: “There’s no bullshit like design bullshit” - Design Week

If we use jargon, we reveal our insecurity. If we use pretentious language, we expose our arrogance. But if we use language that anyone can understand, people are much more likely to value what we do.

Simplified JavaScript Jargon

An A-Z of JavaScript jargon (although some of the “explanations” could do with de-jargonifying themselves).

Silicon Valley Job Title Generator

This could come in useful for updating the Clearleft website.

Avoiding ‘words to avoid’ | Inside GOV.UK

I love the thinking behind this plugin that highlights the weasel words that politicians are so found of.

Design Jargon Bullshit

Fodder for a Markov chain.

Translation From MS-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Dean Hachamovitch’s “Native HTML5″ announcement [dive into mark]

Mark Pilgrim translates Dean Hachamovitch’s utterly bizarre and nonsensical announcement of IE10 that kept talking about “native HTML5.”

Enterprise HTML - Provides proven high performance, enterprise-level and scalable HTML tips and best practices.

It's funny (and painful) because it's true (and painful).

Unsuck It

An excellent resource for deciphering corporate business-speak gibberish (I'm going to need this when I'm eavesdropping on Andy Budd making phone calls).

New Programming Jargon — Global Nerdy

Some of the best neologisms in programming, many of them to do with bug-fixing.

List of Words it is NOT ok to ever say.

Glad to see "webinar" on this list. Shame about "lifestream."

Douchespeak

Ridiculing the empty language of the corporate world one putrid word at a time.