Hint for Hacker News commenters: 99% of the time, if your phrase includes the term "use case", you can safely just delete it and lose no meaning. It's just a way to say "for me" or "for them" that sounds more technical but really isn't.
In this case, you could say "This timeline worked out well for me".
"For me" highlights the fact that my preferences, character, skills, etc., are different from other people's. Something might work well for me but badly for someone else because I happen to be good at working around its quirks, or bad at noticing its faults, or just not interested in the things it doesn't do.
"For my use case" highlights the fact that the things I need to do are different from other people's. Something might be good for my use case but bad for others' because I don't need very high performance but they do, or because I need the gostak to be able to distim the doshes backwards but they don't.
If I move on to doing different work and someone else takes my place, I expect something that works well "for me" to continue being useful for me but not for them, and something that works well "for my use case" to be useful for them but not for me.
"Use case" comes from 90s software engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case
Corporate-speak and cliché idioms makes one sound less clever, not more. It might temporarily signal belonging to some crowd (for example, the HN tech crowd), but in the long term it hampers one's ability to communicate in an effective and elegant way.
I can think of countless annoying corporate buzzwords I see all the time on HN or at my job which are totally opaque and useless. "Use case" is two simple English words which anyone, including non-tech people, uses and clearly understands. This is not the hill to die on. I could link so many comments posted in the last week which are infinitely more buzzword-laden and irritating. If you really feel the dire necessity to chastise them, at least pick one of of those.
I do partly agree with you on "moving forward" or "going forward". I'm skeptical the situation was nearly as ambiguous as you suggest (it means "in the future", which is ambiguous, but it's no more ambiguous than saying "in the future", and anyone can easily request clarification if they hear "in the future"), but I had a few managers who said and wrote that like 30 times per day, and it does start to get on your nerves. Perhaps "use case" is similarly overused by some, but it also has a specific and clear meaning which would take longer to say/write than just using the term.
Source?
Where I am "use case" is definitely [still] tech jargon. I know very very few non-tech people who've ever heard it used, much less could give a definition for it.
Notice that you are already in contradiction with the first criticism that I received in this thread, where a subtle difference in meaning was proposed.
> it means "in the future", which is ambiguous, but it's no more ambiguous than saying "in the future",
The main point is that it is totally unnecessary, we already have the future tense to talk about what will happen in the future.
The same applies here. Remove the phrase with "use case" and you get exactly the same meaning, with less words and less cringe.
"My use case" just generalizes "my {project, job, task, case}(s)". It's not ambiguous, because the intention is to be general. "For me" is a bit more general than that, though, and sometimes you want to be a little more specific.
The specificity hierarchy / subtle difference in meaning goes from "for me" (my attributes) -> "my use case" (my attributes + the case's attributes) -> "my [job/project/whatever]" -> "my [exact thing I'm specifically doing]". I think all can be valid, depending on the context. I maybe should've said "'case' or 'situation' for a particular project or task or goal done by a particular person (or group or organization)" instead (I was implying the latter part), but there's no contradiction here. By contrast, "moving forward" is typically implied and unnecessary no matter the context and can usually be cut as dead weight.
But if if this is a hard-stop item for you at this juncture, then we should circle back... I'm sure we can align on this going forward. ;)
I think you feel that way because of the HN/tech echo chamber. Nobody says or feels the need to say "use case" outside of such circles.
> But if if this is a hard-stop item for you at this juncture, then we should circle back... I'm sure we can align on this going forward. ;)
Hehe ;)
Regardless, I would argue that "use case" has a quite specific and useful meaning that goes beyond mere corp-speak. I wouldn't use in conversation at a neighbourhood barbecue, but in a technical context (like a discussion of Python) the usage seems perfectly fine.
You seem to have reversed cause and effect here. New words/phrases/jargon comes into common usage when it is useful for communicating something. The difference might be subtle, but people wouldn't use the word if they didn't think that it was an important distinction to make.
I think the grandparent's usage of "use case" was totally fine. It wasn't distracting and it didn't change my reading of that comment in any way, shape, or form.
I disagree. HN is a place that seems to pride itself on the quality of its discussions, and on a higher intellectual caliber when compared to other Internet discussion venues. Surely a good command of language is part of that?
Beyond that, who are we to judge what constitutes "good command of language?" Which language are we even talking about here? I don't think HN is going to become a better place by becoming more elitist.
> I don't think HN is going to become a better place by becoming more elitist.
err...
EDIT: I think it's clear nothing more needs to be said. Feel free to respond to this comment or not. I've said my piece.
In this case, you could have said nothing.
"This particular individual" -> "this person"
* ducks and runs