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0 pointspta20024y ago0 comments

What's wrong with performant? (Non-native speaker here)

0 comments

It's a neologism. Some people love it. (Actually, it seems like a lot of people do.) To others however, it strikes the ear as awkward sounding. I wouldn't say there's anything "wrong" about it. It's a matter of taste. It's a bit of a pet peeve for some of us.

I bought a book a couple of years ago: iOS and macOS Performance Tuning. I took note that the author had not used the word "performant" even once in the book's 400 pages. Maybe I'm a snob, but it made the author seem the more credible to me.

blt4y ago

The main argument against "performant" isn't linguistic, it's technical. "Performant" is vague. It can always be replaced by something more descriptive like "fast", "uses little memory", "asymptotically optimal", "parallelizable", and so on.

mariodiana4y ago

Thank you. In light of the fact that George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" essay was just recently posted here, I want to acknowledge that you make a better case than I do. One should aim to make one's meaning plain, as opposed to resorting to inflated (and often vague) language.

etripe4y ago

Additionally, it might be cross-pollination from Germanic languages, which I think all have the word.

notdang4y ago

Thank you for telling me. Having been using it for ages and never realized that it can be interpreted in this way.

In my native Romance language it is written the same and it's an usual word. I never thought that it's a neologism in English and perceived as pretentious.

mariodiana4y ago

You're welcome. But I have to say that I think one of the other replies to my post makes a better case than I.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223555

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mariodiana4y ago

blt4y ago

mariodiana4y ago

etripe4y ago

Additionally, it might be cross-pollination from Germanic languages, which I think all have the word.

notdang4y ago

Thank you for telling me. Having been using it for ages and never realized that it can be interpreted in this way.

In my native Romance language it is written the same and it's an usual word. I never thought that it's a neologism in English and perceived as pretentious.

mariodiana4y ago

You're welcome. But I have to say that I think one of the other replies to my post makes a better case than I.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223555

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse