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This is just top down development.

Works great in many cases instead of bottom up development. It really is a design methodology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design

You just happened to be designing as you were going along coding

I acknowledge that what I'm doing is "about as top-down as you can get" in the article.

Concepts without context are merely jargon. It's not apparent from your words that you are referencing the pre-exisiting idea of top-down/bottom-up, and thus read as your own personal slang.

People probably gloss right over it while reading unless they're personally familiar with the practice, but still have to post to HN for clarification (hint hint).

You sure he knew of top down development before I mentioned it?

Nope. It could just as easily been lucky word usage letting him play it off ("of course I was using it that way!") as much as being decontextualized jargon ("of course I was using it that way!").

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