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Comment by jonahbenton | Hacker News Reader

The word congratulations came into English from Latin, where it was formed by combining prefix com-, meaning with, to gratulari, meaning "give thanks" or "show joy." Gratulari is derived from gratus, as is gratitude. Gratus means "pleasing," "thankful."

Having only had the good fortune to meet you in person a few times:

Congratulations, Rich. You have my deepest gratitude. It fills me with great joy to know you are taking this step. I look forward to what your next stage brings.

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Few people capture this spirit like the classic "Congratulations" video from Big Man Tyrone.

While it has gone through the revolutions from sincere, to sarcastic in intent, to back again, I believe the inherently joyful attitude underpinning the original video carries the buoyishly optimism of sincere joy.

Hah, very fitting way to put it :)

Agree. For those not familiar with Rich's famous use of etymology, see his 2011 presentation "Simple made Easy" as a good example: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

Side question: Rich seems to use etymology as a tool for original thinking and clear explanations. Are there other people who do this as well as he does?

I don't know about technologists who use it in writing or speaking like Rich, but you can trace writers' use of etymology to provoke thinking at least back to Plato. More recent, prominent examples would be Hannah Arendt's acceptance speech in 1975 receiving Denmark's Sonning Prize, in which she uses the etymology of "person", and at least Martin Heidegger's essay The Question Concerning Technology in which he plays with several, including the etymology of "technology" itself.

I’ve always been fascinated with language, and long had a hobby of looking up etymologies (my high school Latin teacher was great at pointing these out in class), but Rich’s style definitely pushed me to use it as a tool for thinking. Naming things is (famously) hard, but a strong command of language (and willingness to dig through the thesaurus) has lit the way through many difficult situations.

I use etymonline for this kind of thing often. Our complex words are compositions of lots of forgotten meaning... I find it helps to retrace those steps.

e.g. https://www.etymonline.com/word/system - see how it's about composition, not so much about ways of doing things.

And yet, the word Hickey coined, "complect", is silly at best, and a gatekeeping obstacle to outsiders/newcomers at worst.

Funnily enough, your complaint here is that although it may be simple, it is not necessarily easy, while the talk is an argument that we should prefer simplicity even at the cost of some (temporary) un-ease.

I'm not sure how you got that impression from my comment.

But for the sake of argument, I'm saying "complect" is neither simple *nor* easy. It's obviously not easy since it's unfamiliar. But nor is it simple, or to be really precise, no simpler than alternatives, since it doesn't conceptually improve on plain words and phrases like "complicate", "intertwine", "mix up", "separate", "tease apart", etc. It adds nothing, really.

Your comment kind of highlights some of the errors many take away from "Simple Made Easy": that ease is in opposition to simplicity and/or that they are completely orthogonal.

Coined? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/complect

Revived, then.

Are you complaining he used a word you weren't familiar with?

we see what you did there ;)

thanks for the lesson etymonline

> thanks for the lesson etymonline

Perhaps you've never listened to a Rich Hickey talk before but he's notorious for riffing on the meaning of words.

I got downvoted heavily but I genuinely do enjoy etymology. Wasn't at all a negative remark, just a playful jab

Anyways thanks for the explanation. I wasn't in on the meme

Go watch the classic Simple Made Easy and you'll understand the comment.

https://youtu.be/SxdOUGdseq4

It might have started with Rich, but by now starting a Clojure talk with the destructuring (heh) of a word is basically a meme at this point.

Quite literally a meme: https://youtu.be/jlPaby7suOc?t=75

One of the funniest Conj talks ever.

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