For those like me who hate abbreviations used out of context, PDX here refers to the Portland International Airport, Oregon. I presume that the commenter really meant the city of Portland, Oregon. Why it is so hard to type extra 5 characters is beyond me.
Not many HN people, especially from outside of the US, can immediately recognize PDX. Besides, the commenter I was responding to used SF for San Francisco. For consistency sake they should had used SFO then. :-)
Not all of those are airport codes. I suppose it’s due to the fact that Portland is just one word, and it doesn’t contract as nicely as the other cities.
And somewhat the same with LA. LA is the city, LAX is the airport. You don't really see LAX used for the city.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33277163
> I wouldn't say we always call Chicago ORD, but it definitely happens.
CHI, yes, sometimes.
But never ORD - or MDW or GYY. Although CGX would be hilarious. :)
I've lived in San Diego, the Bay Area, and NYC for extended periods of time, but I don't think I've ever heard someone referring to those cities by their airport codes. Maybe you've lived in different parts of the country?
They're a country without borders that span the globe .. and unless you're part of "the group" (be that C programmers, Ham radio operators, pilots, Code Talkers, et al.) you'll rarely hear their jargon.
In other words, it's _not_ an incredibly common well established convention. Thanks for clarifying my confusion.
Ditto, for example, 'klick' for kilomtre in certain military and gaming circles.
You might argue against "incredibly common" wrt general global population, the counter is that it's incredibly common within a globe spanning subgroup.
You'd fail to make the case against "well established" unless you'd care to argue that jargon of some five+ decades isn't well established.
I dare say there are conventions that you would argue are common that have near zero reach outside of the USofA .. handegg for example.
Anyway I think I'll bow out at this point. I'm not finding this discussion especially enlightening.
Leaving aside that it came up often enough back in the early 1980s when I was working on the first draft of Magma (known then as Cayley) and having discussions with John Cannon, Charles Leedham-Green and George Havas, I would not say that it's as common among mathematicians to use the term as it is among air travellers and pilots to use city codes.
All air travel workers deal with destination codes, generally on a daily basis.
Not all mathematicians work with Abstract Algebras.
> I'm not finding this discussion especially enlightening.
Agreed. Your example certainly struggled for relevance.
Anyway I think most people mean "common" to say "you have some reasonable expectation that it will be understood". That's what I certainly mean. So yeah I think I'll stick with my original point here:
> In other words, it's _not_ an incredibly common well established convention. Thanks for clarifying my confusion.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530035
Anyway I'll have to log out after this comment since I feel myself getting dumber. Apparently I don't have enough self-control here to extract myself from this discussion in any other way.
I wouldn't expect anyone to know what BNE (Brisbane) or DAR (Darwin) meant at first value.
https://www.mcc.gov/resources/story/section-writing-guide-go...
Of course Portland, OR would be quick enough to type too