HTML Empty / Void / “Self Closing” Tags. We’re All Idiots.
One of my pet peeves — ok, who are we kidding, as Carlin joked: “I don’t have pet peeves, I have rabid psychotic hatreds “— is when in tech a name is chosen for something that has absofragginglutely not one blasted thing to do with what the word means, or what the target of said word does. See my previous article on the use of the word “closure” when it doesn’t freaking close anything. It contains, wraps, holds, might even say it ENcloses it, but what programmers call closures aren’t!
The W3C specifications are rife with these types of poor language choices. Words like “deprecated” as if we’re talking down to old tags like petulant children. Various phrasings that just reek of being bad translations from other languages. But worst of all a general use of ambiguous terminology that makes it harder for beginners to learn and experts to even agree upon.
It’s hard to say where this comes from, bad translations, ignorance, or perhaps even willful sabotage. I’ve been programming computers since ’78 and far too much of the jargon and technobabble common to the field seems to exist for one purpose only; to perpetuate the idea that programming is difficult. Far too many times I’ve sat there listening to bullshit bingo, and said “why can’t you just talk like normal people!”
