I need a software that .... | Hacker News Reader

I need a software that ....

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85 pointsrokhayakebe55 comments

I need a software that...

A native speaker of english from the west would never use this phrasing — software is abstract rather than individual. Your usage stands out as south asian as much as "do the needful" would.

"I need software that…" or "I need a program that…" would both be correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun

A significant fraction of my coworkers talk like that, and I've noticed lately that I'm starting to occasionally think/talk that way as well (note I'm from the U.S. midwest and only speak english). It's a bit disturbing, really.

It is your innate ability to learn that takes over automatically there. You probably couldn't stop such assimilation of things done around you even if you wanted to, it's how our brains are wired.

If you had to consciously decide to learn something you'd be a baby forever stuck in a 'dead-lock' of not having the reasoning ability to start learning-by-imitation, so it's 'on' by default.

So given extended exposure to some behaviour it is very hard to resist imitating it to some extent, even if you know better.

It's true, spend some time in the South (US) or Britain, and return to the midwest, they will comment on how you picked up an accent while you were there.

You don't need to qualify it that far. It's grammatically incorrect in just about all standard forms of English. Exceptions happen in various jargons like you'll see 'codes' in sciency and weapons-researchy contexts but I don't think this is one of them.

On the other hand, frequency defines correct grammar eventually, doesn't it? If enough South Asians use that phrasing consistently, you can't argue it's bad grammar in that context.

Personally I find 'a software' and 'softwares' extremely annoying.

No doubt. I'm not trying to be some irksome grammarian making a fusty point about dangling prepositions here. In current written English 'a software' is simply bad. This could change, but we're nowhere close to the point where it has. For all we know 'your welcome' might be just fine in another century. Right now, though, it's simply bad writing.

My point was that it is hard to say when something is 'simply bad' in the sprawling and multifarious carnival that is the English language.

I vaguely recollect from reading the blog Language Hat that modern linguists sometimes decide which variant of a class (for instance, 'software' vs 'a software' vs 'softwares') is more correct by counting how many Google search results each variant returns. No doubt they need to filter this data in many ways, but it would seem that it is no longer possible to say 'X is correct, all else is not.'

There are certain terms (like "a software") that are never used by people who's first language is English. IANAL (I am not a linguist), but I'd consider myself a "descriptivist" when it comes to defining a language. I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers. Forms that are never used by native speakers can be defined as "incorrect". Of course, languages change (especially English), so those forms can and do become incorporated into the language over time. But, as English stands in 2010, "a software" is less correct than simply saying "software".

I guess by your argument and the prevalence of usage by native speakers, who's is correct as well.

I don't think he is saying native speakers never make mistakes though.

A better example might be people using if when they should be using whether.

"I think that a living language is defined by its usage by native speakers."

First, I think there are degrees of nativeness in language acquisition. Cutting out the entire class of strictly non-native speakers is a bit of an extreme step.

Second, what about differences in usage of the same language over two classes of native speaker?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_Eng... was once considered to be "incorrect" English.

Yeah it bugs me too. Then again, "I'll have a water" will fall out of my mouth sometimes.

There's nothing wrong with that. In that context, "a water" is the same as "a glass of water".

But that's different. Water is not something that is discretely counted typically, but glasses of water are.

Unless you're the Mad Hatter, you'll be ordering a (whole) glass and enough water to fill it. We collapse the "glass of" into epsilon because it's assumed in polite conversation the waiter won't be pouring the water into your open hands.

"extremely"

Lighten up on the coffee :). When was the last time something newsworthy happened because someone said 'a software'?

I'm a snob at heart :) or so I am informed.

Geeks, always dissecting everything :) .

English is in fact my third language. But, yes, I agree with what would be the correct phrases.

What on earth is a 'third language'? I was under the impression that anything that's not your native tongue is your 'second language', isn't that true?

I would presume that someone's 'third language' is the third language that he learned. However, according to Wikipedia, you are right that someone's second language is any language they learned after their first, not just the second language they learned.

So "my third language" is a succinct form of "my second second language."

What I mean is I was born speaking Wolof. Then I was taught French at 3. Then sometime when I was 15 I started to learn English. That along with German, I believe. That is why I say third.

Edit: Reading my answer to the original comment, you could have figured what I meant. Like when I read your username, I know ur means your, but maybe I should make a huge deal about it :). Lighten up, it's Wednesday.

The depressing part is that when you fix the query to "I need software that...", you get almost exactly the same list of responses.

There's simply nobody using it correctly.

That's because many of the top results are referring to this story. If you scroll further down the results for that query, most results just have those words, not necessarily in that order.

It was the actual query results (page 3+) I was talking about. You still get "I need a software that helps me with my finances" results, just without the "a" in bold any more.

There are depressingly few hits in there that actually use the phrase "I need software" without the bad English.

When I first read that title I thought that the post was making fun of that wording, and that there would be poorly-thought out examples from non-technical people.

"I need a software that generates a lot of traffic to my site..." Nice idea and good initial attempt but you're going to get a lot of noise and crud with this one. In fact, I linked in almost expecting to see "I need a software that picks winning lotto tickets" to come up or the even more elaborate "I need a software that works the way I want it too."

at the moment it seems like fake gift card software is very much in demand. This request fills almost the entire list

That software idea is actually a job posted on one of the many freelance job finder boards, scriptlance in this case. There are a few jobs that seem to catch a lot of attention and get re-tweeted by a large number of popular twitter accounts, including @hulufans and @rootzreggae, which don't seem to be ones that should be interested in freelance job offers.

"I need a software that controls US defense systems to remove human error from strategic decisions must not become self-aware" (via @laughlitmus)

I have a saved search for "software sucks" and another for "program sucks", they can be pretty insightful. A lot of people really hate CD/DVD Burning software and manufacturer's printer software.

Add in the manufacturers software driver for my Netgear Wifi dongle! NEVER connects to my Wifi network (have to manually connect each time, tried a lot of settings and nothing works). I have to have it installed so the dongle is operable, but the software itself is crap.

I get (slightly) more interesting results from:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22I+wish+there+was+software%2...

Or just "I wish there was..."

I wish there was a Gucci Mane bot.

I wish there was a checkers in tneck.

hey. There isn't a storm comming. I wish there was...

I wish there was a photographer with me in the bathroom rite now caz I look hella sexy!!! #conceitedtweet

OK, no great business ideas there (unless you work for Checkers Drive-In Restaurants and can figure out where tneck is) but a great insight into the hopes and dreams of people in the 21st century.

edit: Oh, apparently Teaneck, New Jersey.

edit2: "I wish there was a way to bake cookies from my bed!" Now there's a customer need for ya!

As a variant, this is amusing:

http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22I+wish+my+computer%22

A Gucci Mane bot would be so sweet.

I only just looked that up. Apparently Gucci Mane is a rapper.

My mental image is spoiled.

"I wish there were"

Oh, I know that, but I didn't want to confine my sample to the tiny fraction of twitter users with a grasp of basic grammar.

I've created something like that a while ago: http://wappr.com

p/s: looking to sell it. anyone interested?

iusethis.com is probably a better resource for finding software that already exists. If the goal is to find ideas for software that doesn't exist my request would be something that makes sense out of Twitter searches. So much garbage, duplication and SPAM. It seems like there should be some better method even if it was simply a vote up/down style ranking system within the search results.

Interesting idea, but the results are pretty empty...

The first page looks like it's full of people retweeting this.

And the rest looks like job ads.

Pretty ironic.

I'm amazed at how many times those job ads get retweeted. Recently, someone put up an ELance posting for 'salon software' which triggered my twitter search in Tweetdeck. There were 3-4 pages of retweets.

All this just confirms the signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is incredibly low. Too bad, because poorly phrased or not, the question was interesting.

I liked the part where nothing interesting happened.

"I need a software that allows me 2 post short messages 2 the web n allows people 2 follow certain people to keep up with it."

Haha, nice one.

or http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=&phrase=Is+...

If anyone at Twitter's paying attention, your mobile redirect breaks the link.

But I just typed it in manually.

Could be interesting, however I think only software engineers reason this way. Normal people want solutions to their problems, and usually don't realize software could be this solution.

You have set up recursion (there is hackernewsbot that post the same link):

hackernewsbot I need a software that ....... http://twitter.com/#search?q=i%20need%20a%20software%20that

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