Thread: Jargon and acronyms on this mailing list
I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let people know about it in case you don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and gathered the most used acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth), and IIUC (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post below, I'll refrain from copying everything here.
Cheers,
Greg
Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com> writes: > I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about > the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let people know about it in case you > don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and > gathered the most used acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym > was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth), and IIUC > (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post > below, I'll refrain from copying everything here. > > https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/understanding-the-postgres-hackers-mailing-list Nice write-up! Might it also be worth linking to the acronyms and glossary sections of the docs? https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/acronyms.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/glossary.html > Cheers, > Greg - ilmari
> On 2 Sep 2024, at 13:06, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker <ilmari@ilmari.org> wrote: > > Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com> writes: > >> I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about >> the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let people know about it in case you >> don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and >> gathered the most used acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym >> was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth), and IIUC >> (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post >> below, I'll refrain from copying everything here. >> >> https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/understanding-the-postgres-hackers-mailing-list > > Nice write-up! +1 > Might it also be worth linking to the acronyms and > glossary sections of the docs? Or maybe on the site under https://www.postgresql.org/list/ in some way? -- Daniel Gustafsson
On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 12:01:42PM -0400, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote: > I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about > the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let people know about it in case you > don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and > gathered the most used acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym > was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth), and IIUC > (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post > below, I'll refrain from copying everything here. Do you think these acronyms make it difficult for some to contribute to Postgres? I've always felt that they were pretty easy to figure out and a nice way to save some typing for common phrases, but I'm not sure it's ever really been discussed. -- nathan
On 2024-Aug-30, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote: > I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about > the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let people know about it in case you > don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and > gathered the most used acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym > was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth), and IIUC > (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post > below, I'll refrain from copying everything here. > > https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/understanding-the-postgres-hackers-mailing-list Good post, thanks for taking the time. This seems a great resource to link in the https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/So,_you_want_to_be_a_developer%3F page or maybe in https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Developer_FAQ or both ... and also this one http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2024/08/posting-your-patch-on-pgsql-hackers.html -- Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/ "Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein." Nadie está tan esclavizado como el que se cree libre no siéndolo (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
On Sat, 31 Aug 2024 at 04:02, Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com> wrote: > I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let peopleknow about it in case you don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and gathered the mostused acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth),and IIUC (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post below, I'll refrain from copyingeverything here. > > https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/understanding-the-postgres-hackers-mailing-list I think this is useful. Thanks for posting. I think HEAD is commonly misused to mean master instead of the latest commit of the current branch. I see the buildfarm even does that. Thanks for getting that right in your blog post. David
> I normally wouldn't mention my blog entries here, but this one was about > the hackers mailing list, so wanted to let people know about it in case you > don't follow Planet Postgres. I scanned the last year's worth of posts and > gathered the most used acronyms and jargon. The most commonly used acronym > was IMO (in my opinion), followed by FWIW (for what it's worth), and IIUC > (if I understand correctly). The complete list can be found in the post > below, I'll refrain from copying everything here. > > https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/understanding-the-postgres-hackers-mailing-list Thank you for the excellent article. I think it is very useful for non-native English speakers like me. Best reagards, -- Tatsuo Ishii SRA OSS K.K. English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en/ Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp
David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com> writes:
> I think HEAD is commonly misused to mean master instead of the latest
> commit of the current branch. I see the buildfarm even does that.
> Thanks for getting that right in your blog post.
IIRC, HEAD *was* the technically correct term back when we were
using CVS. Old habits die hard.
regards, tom lane
On 2024-09-08 Su 11:35 PM, Tom Lane wrote: > David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com> writes: >> I think HEAD is commonly misused to mean master instead of the latest >> commit of the current branch. I see the buildfarm even does that. >> Thanks for getting that right in your blog post. > IIRC, HEAD *was* the technically correct term back when we were > using CVS. Old habits die hard. > > Yeah. The reason we kept doing it that way in the buildfarm was that for a period we actually had some animals using CVS and some using that new-fangled git thing. I guess I could try to write code to migrate everything, but it would be somewhat fragile. And what would we do if we ever decided to migrate "master" to another name like "main"? I do at least have code ready for that eventuality, but it would (currently) still keep the visible name of HEAD. cheers andrew -- Andrew Dunstan EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com
On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 1:03 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote: > I guess I could try to write code to migrate everything, but it would be > somewhat fragile. And what would we do if we ever decided to migrate > "master" to another name like "main"? I do at least have code ready for > that eventuality, but it would (currently) still keep the visible name > of HEAD. Personally, I think using HEAD to mean master is really confusing. In git, master is a branch name, and HEAD is the tip of some branch, or the random commit you've checked out that isn't even a branch. I know that's not how it worked in CVS, but CVS was a very long time ago. If we rename master to main or devel or something, we'll have to adjust the way we speak again, but that's not a reason to keep using the wrong terminology for the way things are now. -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
On 2024-09-09 Mo 1:19 PM, Robert Haas wrote: > On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 1:03 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote: >> I guess I could try to write code to migrate everything, but it would be >> somewhat fragile. And what would we do if we ever decided to migrate >> "master" to another name like "main"? I do at least have code ready for >> that eventuality, but it would (currently) still keep the visible name >> of HEAD. > Personally, I think using HEAD to mean master is really confusing. In > git, master is a branch name, and HEAD is the tip of some branch, or > the random commit you've checked out that isn't even a branch. I know > that's not how it worked in CVS, but CVS was a very long time ago. > > If we rename master to main or devel or something, we'll have to > adjust the way we speak again, but that's not a reason to keep using > the wrong terminology for the way things are now. There are some serious obstacles to changing it all over, though. I don't want to rewrite all the history, for example. What we could do relatively simply is change what is seen publicly. e.g. we could rewrite the status page to read "Branch: master". We could also change URLs we generate to use master instead of HEAD (and change it back when processing the URLs. And so on. Changing things on the client side would be far more complicated and difficult. cheers andrew -- Andrew Dunstan EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com
On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 7:20 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 1:03 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
> I guess I could try to write code to migrate everything, but it would be
> somewhat fragile. And what would we do if we ever decided to migrate
> "master" to another name like "main"? I do at least have code ready for
> that eventuality, but it would (currently) still keep the visible name
> of HEAD.
Personally, I think using HEAD to mean master is really confusing. In
git, master is a branch name, and HEAD is the tip of some branch, or
the random commit you've checked out that isn't even a branch. I know
that's not how it worked in CVS, but CVS was a very long time ago.
Yeah, and it gets extra confusing when some of the error messages in git explicitly talk about HEAD and that HEAD is something completely different from our terminology.
If we rename master to main or devel or something, we'll have to
adjust the way we speak again, but that's not a reason to keep using
the wrong terminology for the way things are now.
Agreed in general. But also if we are going to end up making technical changes to handle it, then if we're ever going to make the change master -> main (or whatever), it would save work and pain to do the two at the same time.
On Tue, Sep 3, 2024 at 11:50 AM Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> wrote:
Do you think these acronyms make it difficult for some to contribute to
Postgres? I've always felt that they were pretty easy to figure out and a
nice way to save some typing for common phrases, but I'm not sure it's ever
really been discussed
I do think it raises the bar a bit, especially for non-native-English speakers. Granted, the learning curve is not super high, and context plus web searching can usually help people out, but the lists are dense enough already, so I wanted to help people out. Also, mailing lists in general are a pretty foreign concept to young developers, and as AFAICT [1], not all the acronyms have crossed to the texting world.
Cheers,
Greg
[1] See what I did there? [2]
[2] Do people still learn about and use footnotes?
On 2024-09-09 Mo 3:54 PM, Andrew Dunstan wrote: > > On 2024-09-09 Mo 1:19 PM, Robert Haas wrote: >> On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 1:03 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> >> wrote: >>> I guess I could try to write code to migrate everything, but it >>> would be >>> somewhat fragile. And what would we do if we ever decided to migrate >>> "master" to another name like "main"? I do at least have code ready for >>> that eventuality, but it would (currently) still keep the visible name >>> of HEAD. >> Personally, I think using HEAD to mean master is really confusing. In >> git, master is a branch name, and HEAD is the tip of some branch, or >> the random commit you've checked out that isn't even a branch. I know >> that's not how it worked in CVS, but CVS was a very long time ago. >> >> If we rename master to main or devel or something, we'll have to >> adjust the way we speak again, but that's not a reason to keep using >> the wrong terminology for the way things are now. > > > There are some serious obstacles to changing it all over, though. I > don't want to rewrite all the history, for example. > > What we could do relatively simply is change what is seen publicly. > e.g. we could rewrite the status page to read "Branch: master". We > could also change URLs we generate to use master instead of HEAD (and > change it back when processing the URLs. And so on. I've done this. Nothing in the client or the database has changed, but the fact that we refer to "master" as "HEAD" is pretty much hidden now from the web app and the emails it sends out. That should help lessen any confusion in casual viewers. Comments welcome. I don't think I have missed anything but it's always possible. cheers andrew -- Andrew Dunstan EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com
On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 3:54 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote: > There are some serious obstacles to changing it all over, though. I > don't want to rewrite all the history, for example. Because of the way git works, that really wouldn't be an issue. We'd just push the tip of the master branch to main and then start committing to main and delete master. The history wouldn't change at all, because in git, a branch is really just a movable pointer to a commit. The commits themselves don't know that they're part of a branch. A lot of things would break, naturally. We'd still all have master branches in our local repositories and somebody might accidentally try to push one of those branches back to the upstream repository and the buildfarm and lots of other tooling would get confused and it would all be a mess for a while, but the history itself would not change. -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
On 2024-09-11 We 8:34 AM, Robert Haas wrote: > On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 3:54 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote: >> There are some serious obstacles to changing it all over, though. I >> don't want to rewrite all the history, for example. > Because of the way git works, that really wouldn't be an issue. We'd > just push the tip of the master branch to main and then start > committing to main and delete master. The history wouldn't change at > all, because in git, a branch is really just a movable pointer to a > commit. The commits themselves don't know that they're part of a > branch. > > A lot of things would break, naturally. We'd still all have master > branches in our local repositories and somebody might accidentally try > to push one of those branches back to the upstream repository and the > buildfarm and lots of other tooling would get confused and it would > all be a mess for a while, but the history itself would not change. I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't referring to the git history, but the buildfarm history. Anyway, I think what I have done should suffice. You should no longer see the name HEAD on the buildfarm server, although it will continue to exists in the database. Incidentally, I wrote a blog post about changing the client default name some years ago: <http://adpgtech.blogspot.com/2021/06/buildfarm-adopts-modern-git-naming.html> I also have scripting to do the git server changes (basically to set its default branch), although it's rather github-specific. cheers andrew -- Andrew Dunstan EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com