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samreight

23 karma · joined January 14, 2020

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samreight··on Show HN: Cantools – an extensive set of CAN bus tools
> I'm a very technical person, and I honestly don't think I'd ever heard of it.

> CAN is obscure enough that I’d never heard of it.

These types of statements are why I said “insist”.

There is really is almost no way to make statements like these without sounding foolish. You’re asking us to posit some compelling reason that anything you don’t know is “obscure”!

As someone doing quite a bit of technical writing I’m sensitive to this topic because it really is a type of bikeshedding, which is a patently destructive criticism (even if usually unintentional). It might not be bikeshedding if one has some stronger evidence. My evidence is that CAN is in the marketing material for any automotive car scanner from $10 to $10000. It’s literally as ubiquitous as Ethernet in the US and Europe. As someone else mentioned this really doesn’t matter, what matters is if the term is obscure to the intended users/audience.

Tech writing is about economy, and there are thoughtful discussions to be had about what needs to be described, and what is assumed from the audience and providing an ideal user experience. Appeals to ones own experience unless you’re a member of a special audience are usually the worst.

samreight··on Show HN: Cantools – an extensive set of CAN bus tools
And the exact same thing can be said about “Java” or in this instance “Python” or any other jargon. Why does no one ask for those terms highlighted? All technical documentation is not a Wikipedia article. It’s just not appropriate imo.
samreight··on Show HN: Cantools – an extensive set of CAN bus tools
If you saw a library for say Image Processing or cattle husbandry for Java/JVM would you insist that the project provide a description of “Java”? I’m going to guess if you’re being honest you’d say no. CAN really is not an obscure thing at all. Also it is ones of those things that if you don’t know what it is, you probably don’t need this. Otherwise the google burden is minimal for the curious.