What's the use of 'use case'?
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Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:46:34 -0400
From: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Subject: On computerese
Message-ID: <CAKH6PiWeb62+PwDt_S7GgDjCBL_TS0mzB-qQd9H3_V_=1qn2cQ@mail.gmail.com>
There it festered, right in the middle of Branden's otherwise high literary
style: "use cases". I've despaired over the term ever since it wormed its
way into computer folks' vocabulary. How does a "use case" differ from a
"use"? Or, what's the use of "use case"?
And while I'm despairing, "concatenate" rolls on, undeterred by Research's
campaign for concision. We determinedly excised the word from the seventh
edition. The man page header for cat(1) read "catenate and print". Posix
added content on both ends, making "concatenate and print files". Gnu
puffed it up further to "concatenate files and print on the standard
output".
It's not as if the seventh edition was storming the gates of English.
According to the OED, "catenate" and "concatenate" are synonyms of long
standing that entered the language almost simultaneously. Why pick the
flabby one over its brisk--and more mnemonic--rival?
Tags: quote
Authors: ag