10.20.03 reciprocity

I am both pragmatic and idealistic and when people do favors for me I reciprocate, even if I'm not inclined to do whatever they would like. Byron has helped a lot with the domain transfers and he will be watching the kids while I go to New York. He also has a research paper due while I'm gone.

This means that I am sitting here reading a Latex document with tiny script, squinting at terms like Boolean function and Cartesian approximation. I don't have a vague clue what I'm reading, which isn't a huge problem since I like to read esoteric things. Phrases like automatic iterative abstraction refinement do not scare me.

But I'm reading for word choice. And you know what? Computer scientists do not share a common language - the people Byron works with grew up speaking a dozen human languages and they program in a dozen other mechanical languages. If they don't know how to describe something, they don't go to a thesaurus. They just make stuff up. Need a new word? Add a prefix! Still not clear? Add a suffix, or maybe two!

I spend most of my time red-lining words that I am later informed are common usage even though they do not exist in any other academic field.

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