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Comment by hmeh | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate people taking the time to write articles like this, but please consider the people who are going to read it. ADB is an acronym. Not everyone knows what it means. If you're going to write an entire article about a feature being removed, please at least describe the feature in a way that people can understand without having to google it so that they can have an idea as to whether or not this is relevant to them.

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> ADB is an acronym. Not everyone knows what it means

I've used ADB a half-hundred times, and I had no idea what it meant until I read replies to your comment. Defining the acronym is likely not helpful to anyone who has used it before (and thus be affected by the change)

To each their own, but your response baffled me. If you've used ADB a half hundred times, weren't you ever curious what it stood for? I can't even use acronyms without knowing what they mean - it's always the first thing I look up, primarily because it helps me really remember and understand what the topic is about. Sure, the acronym soon takes on an "atomic unit of meaning" in my head, but especially for something like "Android Debug Bridge", which pretty perfectly describes the tool, knowing the original meaning still often enhances my understanding.

I think it depends on people. I've used adb and it was vaguely related to debugger acronyms so I assumed it would be debugger something. It does not matter to me what the exact name is.

I use a SOAR and never know what this is for (the name, not the product :)). Idem for the plethora of acronyms we use in France they expand to weird words.

Do not even get me started about the acronyms in my company, I have up completely and use them randomly. The fact that it usually does not bother anyone shows their importance :)

I generally wasn't consciously aware that it even was an acronym. For me adb was just a command like cat. I don't randomly ask myself what cat stands for, or all the other obtuse commands I use on the command line. Life is too short.

Catenate, if you're wondering.

If I recall, the article seemed to indicate that certain apps would be broken. I would be worried that apps I relied on would not function anymore. This has nothing to do with me using ADB, it has to do with apps using it (at least from how I read the article).

You use adb, you have a mental model for it. It does something because you make it do that thing and see it happen. You must be able to put yourself into the shoes of a person that isn't you and doesn't have that experience to recognize what I'm saying. Note: many developers not being able to or choosing not to do this is the source of most of the bad UX that is inflicted upon us today.

Android Debug Bridge, for future readers

I was thinking Apple Desktop Bus. Obviously dating myself.

"adb" was also the name of the debugger in early versions of UNIX. I remember using it in Version 7:

https://www.unix.com/man-page/v7/1/adb/

I always mentally converted it to:

Android De Bugger

Does that make sense? No. But that’s what I subliminally assumed it must mean.

It does make sense — the Unix debugger has always been *db, with no bridges in sight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Debugger

"adb" is the name of the executable. Expanding the acronym isn't that relevant. It wpuld be like explaining that KDE stands for Kommon Desktop Environment.

“Desktop Environment” does a fantastic good job of explaining what kde is

Of course it would be. Even in your example, I would know that KDE is a desktop environment, which, from KDE alone, I would not. ADB is a debug bridge (apparently), which means it's a debugging tool, which means it likely wouldn't be terribly relevant for most typical Android users (and if that's wrong, then the article makes an even bigger mistake).

Typical Android users? Maybe not. But any non-developer user who has tried to sideload an app has used it. It’s hard to overstate how central adb is for doing anything on Android that goes beyond vanilla usage.

(But I agree, 5-7 words of explanation would be helpful)

Not "Kool Desktop Environment"?

Oh whoops. Anyway point made I think

The larger issue with the article for me is that it waits until the second paragraph (after a screenshot and so below the fold) to even name what the feature is.

Immediately after using “ADB” for the first time:

> While it’s not a capability used by many Fire TV apps, without it, Fire TV apps can no longer perform certain advanced tasks, such as freeing up internal storage space by clearing the cache of all installed apps.

Maybe the article was edited? Because that seems to give the context required.

The issue is that it doesn't say what the letters of the acronym stand for. ADB? Maybe it means Acme Digitization Business.

All Dissertation But (a status of a student in a graduate Jedi program)

How many people are very capable of using an ATM any day but don’t know what it stands for?

Anyone that has a mental model that includes what ATMs do. The point is that most people don't use ADB and therefore don't have that mental model. Many people have used an ATM, so if an article talked about someone stealing cards/pins on an ATM, most people would know what it meant. There are certain abbreviations that are so commonplace it may be safe to assume people know what they mean, even if they do not know what they stand for.

ADB is not one of those. This is the point, and this is the thing that anyone who is arguing against that point fails to recognize. It's myopia, or self-centered thinking. It leads to bad things in our industry (poor UX being one of them) and I'd encourage anyone thinking this way to consider what "empathy" means and how it is applicable to our field.

My point is defining the letters in an acronym doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what ADB stands for. What matters is what ADB does and literally the next sentence after “ADB” explains exactly what the implications are of it being removed.

“There is a thing called ADB and it being removed means apps can’t clean caches any more” would in no way be helped by defining what ADB stands for.

That’s all it does?

Why not read the article, which went into considerably more detail than I did?

I totally agree with you, but I'm deeply amused that you didn't define the term yourself!

This is a pet peeve of mine, for real, especially with PR releases that sometimes hit the top of HN. Sometimes you'll see a post about "Updates from Widgetizer" and then it just talks about the features, assuming everyone already knows what Widgetizer is. It's kind of crazy. The writers are missing out on a lot of conversion by not doing a "by the way, ADB is the Amazon Debug Bridge, a tool that lets you..." and then people go "Wow, I didn't know that existed," and go investigate.

I didn’t know what it was until someone posted a reply to my comment. I don’t have an Android device and I can’t be bothered to fill in the obvious gaps the author left when the thing isn’t of immediate consequence to me.

It wasn’t intentional, but one could argue by my not defining the term I helped it really sink in for people how annoying it is, heh.

ADB is an abbreviation (or initialism), not an acronym. RADAR is an acronym.

Thank you for the correction/reminder. But I might just start pronouncing it Ahdib so I don't have to acknowledge I made a mistake. Kidding. Thanks.

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