Tuesday, November 23, 2010

When computer nerds try to communicate

A propos of nothing, except for the fact that I'm under a couple of deadlines and having to type a lot in Latex and transfer many Unix files, it never ceases to amuse me how computer experts really don't have any language skills.

My all times favorite irritant from Latex is:

"Missing $ inserted."

by which the lovely folks who created Latex simply mean that the compiler found an unmatched dollar sign, as opposed to the existential puzzle it evokes.

Then of course there is Unix saying that something or other cannot be "canonicalized", which even this blog editor knows is not a word. Memo to Unix creators: the noun is canon, the adjective is canonical and the verb is canonize.

1 comment:

  1. Maybe they opted for "canonicalize" instead of "canonize" with the intent of sounding less saintly!

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