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Comment by hangonhn | Hacker News Reader

There are a couple that I use pretty regularly even outside of tech that result in weird looks from people because I didn't realize it's not part of the common vernacular:

1. orthogonal - "Well, this issue is orthogonal to that issue"

2. impedance mismatch - "I think we have a bit of an impedance mismatch here. We want this but all we have is that."

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At the Supreme Court a lawyer once said something was "entirely orthogonal" to the main issue.

Chief Justice Roberts: “I’m sorry. Entirely what?”

“Orthogonal,” the lawyer replied. “Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant.”

Justice Scalia: “What was that adjective? I liked that."

“I think we should use that in the opinion,” Scalia later added.

“Or the dissent,” said Roberts.

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/supreme_court_word_o...

It's interesting how I've heard "impedance mismatch" used much more often than "orthogonal" - even though the latter has much wider applicability in various disciplines. Impedance mismatch is a very specific term in high frequency circuits. Orthogonality is relevant anywhere you use vector spaces (including linear algebra, real analysis, PDEs, etc).

A related one I've heard lately (from VC "thought leader" types) is modulo in non-numeric contexts.

"Modulo" is itself part of the techie idiom, no?

I remember years ago, probably in physics circles, hearing modulo [this or that other consideration] . Disregarding.

Edit: Live quote. Most recent Scott Locklin:

A friend of mine tested positive for ‘rona antibodies; he felt a bit run down and wondered if he had been exposed. He had been (modulo false positives).

Orthogonal often seems to be used in place of "unrelated" but deployed by the person to make what they're saying sound cleverer than it really is since they've used maths terminology!

I use orthogonal specifically to say that two or more things can be changed independently without affecting the others. I don't think unrelated carries that connotation with how people actually use it. I've never actually met someone who uses unrelated to mean "the absence of relations" literally. Maybe it should but I won't get too broken up about it as a language descriptivist.

Perhaps, that's just been my impression at least in some cases I've seen. It has its valid usages I'm sure.

Not really. It's a culture thing. In certain tech fields, (in academia), the concept of orthogonality is important. Hang out with those crowds and they'll use "orthogonal" in their day to day usage all the time. To them it's not a fancier version of "unrelated". It's at the same level.

I just tried searching HN for occurrences of "is orthogonal", and it does seem that most uses would be better served with "unrelated". In some cases, however, orthogonal sounds more appropriate, and the reason are the geometric associations that it evokes. For example in the sentence "Having chip/pin is orthogonal to the card being a credit or debit card", orthogonal evokes the image of a contingency table where all the cells are non-zero. The word "unrelated" doesn't have the same effect despite being synonymous.

Kind of like people using big-O notation when talking about constant numbers

This may well be true, but it can also be an accurate and succinct word for "related to the bigger picture but a separate conversation".

E.g. performance and security of the system both relate to that system but each dimension can be worked on or discussed without necessarily impacting the other.

Our team uses it quite organically and humbly (and not excessively) but yes it absolutely is a candidate for use in an affected manner rather than a genuine one.

"orthogonal" to me is HN-speak. I always feel annoying when I use it.

I've tried to use "orthogonal" in a vernacular context a few times, on each occasion causing wrinkled brows. It's not tech jargon, it's a perfectly good word. OK, maybe it's really maths jargon?

I use orthogonal in a negative sense "what you do is orthogonal to the strategy".

Looks like everyone has their own interpretation of these tells.

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