>
> > Summary: I look at the phrase 'strike a balance' in different languages,
>
> It is interesting that you picked up on "strike a balance" which has
> been a standard English phrase for a very long time rather than the much
> more resent, (and itself a form of jargon), "dumbing down".
>
> The other point is that the use of Jargon is often as a form of
> shorthand so as to avoid excessive verbosity, (or long windedness).
>
We are (maybe) mingling two issues here -- there is an important
distinction between idiomatic expressions ("striking a balance", "dumbing
down") and technical terms (jargon).
If you want to make it easier for non-native english speakers to understand
-- minimal use of idiomatic expressions is a good idea. They really don't
serve much real purpose, other than making the prose more colorful and
friendly (to those that understand it). Sometimes a bit of brevity is
gained, but not much.
Technical jargon, on the other hand, can be very helpful for precision and
compactness.
(side note -- are all domain-specific technical term "jargon"? I tend to
see "jargon" as having a negative connotation -- specifically that it isn't
required for technical specificity. That is, "jargon" is language that is
unnecessarily domain specific)
I think it's pretty important to use the common domain specific terms in
introductory texts -- how else will folks learn them? So I make a
distinction between *using* a technical term, and *introducing* a technical
term.
In fact, in my PR on Jonathan's doc on None, I deliberately introduced the
term "Singleton" -- not because it was necessary to understand the idea at
hand, but because people are likely to encounter the term elsewhere.
-CHB
--
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax
Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception
chris.bar...@noaa.gov
_______________________________________________
Python-ideas mailing list
Python-ideas@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas
Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
