DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab is a user on toot-lab.reclaim.technology. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse.

hi i'm a software engineer and i worked in the web for a good 8 years before i ever realized what the abbreviations i18n and l10n (internationalization and localization) stood for

literally i knew what they were *about*, but thought the numbers had something to do with some funky standards body or some shit

numeronyms of this form are bad so so so so bad don't
just
don't

@tcql I don't understand why anyone ever thought they were a good idea.

DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab @djsundog

@USBloveDog @InspectorCaracal @tcql "internationalization" is no longer than "universal serial bus"

· Web · 0 · 0

@djsundog @InspectorCaracal @tcql
1. USB doesn’t get spelled out
2. There aren’t regional spelling differences in Universal Serial Bus

@USBloveDog @InspectorCaracal @tcql
1. then why do the words exist
2. this argument doesn't apply to accessibility which gets the same shitty abbreviation tactic

@djsundog @InspectorCaracal @tcql

1. Those are three shorter words which are all used fairly often in different contexts. Even if usb has no inherent meaning, we’d still use the words universal, serial, and bus
2. I completely agree the a11y is complete BS. The biggest pros of I18n are that it reminds you that strings lengths can vary wildly between languages and that you can’t make assumptions about what is a valid letter.

@USBloveDog @InspectorCaracal @tcql it doesn't remind me of either of those things. it reminds me we habitually overcomplicate our jargon. :)

@USBloveDog @djsundog @tcql ... then why are you defining the word by its length?? I'm even MORE confused by it existing now.