Re: Morally equivalent

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Monday, October 17, 2022 at 7:48 PM
> From: tomas@tuxteam.de
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Morally equivalent
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 09:44:15AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > From: Akib Azmain Turja <akib@disroot.org>
> > > Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> > > Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:49:16 +0600
> > >
> > > This should be:
> > >
> > > --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> > > This is almost equivalent to (setf PLACE (cons NEWELT PLACE)),
> > > except that PLACE is evaluated only once (after NEWELT).
> > > --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> >
> > Why not just "This is similar to"?
>
> Back to topic, yes. It seems that this phrase is too jargon-ish to be
> easily understandable to everyone.
> >
> > > Anyway, I enjoy occasionally finding things like "morally equivalent" in
> > > Emacs.
> >
> > Yeah, it's amazing how much noise can an innocent phrase cause around
> > here.
>
> Documentation is hard, after all.

Quite right.  Let us not forget that for years, some developers have regarded certain
programming terminology - most notably 'master/slave' as problematic.  For example, there
was a push a few years ago to remove those terms from Python documentation, which led to
much heated discussion.   Dismissing university students, those having much on their hands
only read what is actually useful and quick.  Today, there is much more to read than a
lifetime to live.  If education avoided wasting thought, one could easily compress those
21 years to 8 years.  The circus of morality does not lead to anything.