Can you identify novice programmers by how they say 'object orientated'? | Hacker News Reader

Can you identify novice programmers by how they say 'object orientated'?

thejanuarist.com

20 pointsspxdcz37 comments

I have never heard anyone pronounce "oriented" by saying "orientated". Maybe if they were 12?

We interview quite a few developers, and I'd say about 25% of them pronounce it 'orientated'. Maybe it's a British thing? Most are graduates too, fresh out of college.

I've heard plenty of US-born / US-raised developers use the term as well. Moreso when I lived in the South than when I moved to the DC metro area.

Another pet peeve of mine are people who "Administrate" computers. I don't know of a polite way to correct them short of correctly using "Administer" in sentences that follow, but I usually come away from that feeling as if they think I'm the one using it incorrectly.

If someone said they "administer" computers, I would think they're MCSEs. Real BOFHs sys admin (could have been just "admin", but the sys prefix is there to importantate.)

Interesting. I ADMINISTER computers, but I used to BE a SYS ADMIN. Administer is a verb to me, and admin a noun. Either way, your suggestion doesn't offend me 1 millionth as much as administrate does, in either usage.

there to importantate

Clearly you meant "importantize". Sheesh.

iMuy importante! :)

Personally I've never heard anyone saying "oriented," or even picked up that it was different from "orientated" until today. The dictionary on OS X says:

orientate |ˈôrēənˌtāt| verb another term for orient.

I suppose that this is just the way that people speak in South Africa? And maybe Britain?

The (short) article doesn't really mention OO - it's about shibboleths: terminology whose usage shows whether you're an insider.

Yep, and here's a better article from Dr. Dobb's with a bunch of good ones: http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&sho...

It's already been mentioned by some commentators, but "orientated" is the norm in British English outside of programming at least.

As an aside, not that I hear people talking about it much, but amongst the people I know it's referred to as "oh oh" anyway.

Interesting. In general use, I would assume that "oriented" would mean focused or directed with regards to some kind of value system (e.g. goal-oriented), whereas "orientated" would mean having completed some kind of initiation training (orientation).

I've heard coders of all abilities say orientated and oriented, and was under the impression they were interchangeable.

One that I have heard repeatedly is MySequel from the Windows devs, and S-Q-L Server from the other side :)

This is something I wonder about a lot - I'm mostly self-taught, and every once in a while I still get blindsided by the pronunciation of a word I've never heard spoken.

There were a lot of home-schoolers where I went to college. You could always tell them because they had very large vocabularies (which they used correctly) but pronounced everything phonetically.

Wouldn't they get the right pronunciation from their parents? Home schooling != being locked in a basement for 18 years with a few textbooks, after all.

Arrangements for home-schooling varies but one common thread is that kids do a lot of reading and writing but not as much speaking so pronunciation slips through. It's just a result of the circumstances.

For quite a few years I was under the impression that there was a verb "misle" whose past tense was misled. [even though I wasn't home-schooled]

I started with PHP/MySQL a few years ago and pronounced it My-S-Q-L. Having only read on web and in book the word, it was only after I began my current position as an ASP.NET/MSSQL developer did I begin hearing it pronounced Sequel. When I started the position, I was actually told that pronouncing it M-S-S-Q-L would result in the entire IT department pegging me as a novice.

I still use S-Q-L.

I started as a Linux admin, and moved on to development, and I usually pronounce it "mysequel", though I use "postgres que ell" or just "postgres".

Same here, but I'd like to see someone try to pronounce it 'postgresequal.' More likely it'll come out 'postgrequal.'

I've heard people use "post-greh-sequel".

This is one that still irritates me, and heard it misused (by non-windows dev) just this past weekend at a conference. Sequel is a product, S-Q-L is the language.

Of course, this has been going on for awhile. http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=s...

Oh, it is called "Sequel Server" within Microsoft, but Wikipedia says "S-Q-L" for the language. Strange... I remember it saying "sequel" some time ago. Is the received pronunciation now C-O-B-O-L too?

My experience is, in the US they say "s-q-l" in academia and "sequel" in industry. YMMV.

That's interesting. In my experience, people who have been around it a long time (say, 20+ years) tend to use "sequel". The younger of my colleagues generally use "S-Q-L".

I started in the Windows world and moved over to Linux (when I have the choice). I've always called them "My ess queue ell" and "Ess queue ell server", respectively. I actually have to stop myself from cringing when co-workers refer to 'seequel server" because it sounds so awkward.

They are interchangeable: http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/orie...

I personally used "oriented" - why use a longer word when a shorter one is precisely equivalent? Also, I'm used to it.

Has anyone seen a similar effect with UNIX / Linux admins in the pronunciation of /etc? Most newcomers say "et cetera", but veterans tend to say "et-see".

see also --> pronunciation of "sudo"

"soo-doo" vs. "pseudo"?

Other ones that come to mind:

   * char (like "char-broiled"? like "care"?)
   * /proc ("prock"?)
   * SQL ("see-quel" or "S Q L")
   * zsh - I guess that could be "zee shell" or "zed shell"

I pronounce char like car. Now that I think about it, that seems weird.

I think "car" makes more sense as that's how character is pronounced. I say it that way in my head, but switch to "char"-as-in-burn when speaking aloud as most people don't know what I mean.

"care" is the most logical pronunciation (as that's how you pronounce the first syllable of "character"), but I've never heard anyone say that. "char" (as in burning to a crisp) is the second-most logical, and is what I say.

I think I actually avoid the word in practice; "cstring" instead of "char star", etc.

I say "care", but I also taught myself C from library books when I was a kid. It was a while before I talked with anyone about C data types, of all things.

I've heard it said (in the uk). It seems to identify programmers who don't like and don't read about programming.

I'd agree here too - if you enjoy programming enough to read about it, then you'll realize that while some people say "orientated" (be it correct or not), the majority of the industry from the inside uses "oriented."

I've also heard the former and immediately had thoughts along the lines of "they don't truly know OO." In my experience these people did not have an intuitive grasp on it.

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