Hacker News Reader

Comment by Loic | Hacker News Reader

In this context, ML is Meta Language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_(programming_language)

Thank you!

The whole time I was like "what in the absolute hell is a ML language".

I've heard so much about Machine Learning in recent years, that I couldn't fathom ML be used in any other context & be understood.

ML is such an overloaded acronym in software that people really need to stop using it or ALWAYS clarify it.

ML = Machine Learning

ML = Machine Language

ML = Markup Language

ML = Meta Language

And I always see ML in the Meta Language sense to be the biggest culprit where writers assume the reader knows it, even though it's probably the least widely known.

thanks, i'm bad at abbreviations and don't like when people just throw them like this without first using the whole term at least once

Expanding this abbreviation conveys zero information. It’s a programming language named ML, and if you haven’t heard of it then giving the etymology of the name isn’t going to help.

It clarifies it's not something else I've heard of (markup language, machine learning). The ML abbreviation shares the space with other terms so it can be confusing. Compare it to HTML which is 1) more popular and 2) unique in the context of programming.

Huh? If I search ‘Meta Language’ I get the exact information I need. If I search ‘ML’ I get less than nothing.

> Expanding this abbreviation conveys zero information. It’s a programming language named ML, and if you haven’t heard of it then giving the etymology of the name isn’t going to help.

Honestly kind of shocked to see this type of mentality...wow.

This is indeed an abbreviation, but it doesn’t convey meaning. At this point ML is just the name of the thing, it could not expand to anything and still convey the same meaning.

If you don’t know ML, knowing what it stands for won’t help you. It’s like JS, either you know what JS is or you don’t. It’s not about what it means, it’s about what it is.

You are forgetting that looking up abbreviations of 3 characters is already very hard, and it becomes almost impossible for the 2 character ones.

It’s usually not when there’s some context.

> A large part of why many people love Rust is that it's the first time they've used an ML family language.

You wouldn’t search "ML" but "ML family language".

Or copy paste the whole thing and ask ChatGPT what ML means in this context.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com