dependencies

dependencies

Posted Jul 4, 2009 18:12 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: dependencies by SiB
Parent article: Soft updates, hard problems

Sure, but popularity is irrelevant to the point I'm making.

Language is supposed to serve people, not the other way. What people use and understand defines language, not the dictionary.

I agree, but I don't know why you bring it up. While I made the statement above about popularity, I didn't say anything about dictionaries except to say that the dictionary doesn't support my usage of "function."

Popularity is all that matters

Language serves people best by being logical, consistent, precise, and easily expressive. Those are not implied by popularity -- the number of people using a particular phrasing. When one chooses between two phrasings to write, the relative number of times one has heard one or the other should be a fairly minor factor.

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