[munk-a]

The article on the null-pointer bug goes into technical details about what the exposed error case is - the fact that it's a bug is made super clear - the fact that it's a logic bug is pretty readily apparent.

The Stripe article starts with "I worked at Stripe for 3+ years" so Stripe is clearly a company, the article itself is focused on the operations & team cohesion side of stripe not on their line of business.

The article about Julia is hosted on `julialang` and within the first paragraph there is a sentence containing: "So I thought it might be helpful to the broader Julia community—and maybe even for other programming language communities—to actually write down Julia’s release process"

None of these articles give you a full and complete comprehension of their topics - walking away from Strip I don't know if they're a listed company or what their market cap is - but I was given enough information to make it through.

ACH is not a common jargon term, and even with common jargon there usually is some explanation, if someone writes a well-written article about some MySQL quirk, it'll probably have the term "SQL" somewhere in the first paragraph and it'll certainly have the term "database" and "query" - those hints are enough to grasp the general subject matter. The word "bank" doesn't show up in the article until paragraph three and the jokey description of doing it to "a dead person" immediately derails the users ability to grasp that it's a monetary transaction - it's perfectly logical that monetary transactions need to have error handling around dead, missing and not-yet-existing people, but leading with that point harms readability.

I think this article is a great example of a poorly written piece that with some very minor edits to clearly define the scope of the article would be a lot more legible.

[baddox]

> ACH is not a common jargon term

It’s not jargon at all, is it? It’s just literally the proper name for the specific payment network. I thought jargon is industry-specific slang terms for concepts that could otherwise be described with less industry-specific terms. There is no simpler or clearer way I’m aware of to refer specifically to ACH.

As for it being common, if you work as a developer on any web products that accept or send significant payments in the US, you’ve almost certainly heard of ACH. If you haven’t, then this article probably won’t be of any interest or use to you even if it had an extensive introduction about what ACH is.

[afarrell]

As someone from the US, though who now lives in the UK, I would feel the need to quality that with the phrase "needless jargon" if I wanted to refer specifically to jargon that could otherwise be described with less industry-specific terms.

[baddox]

So then would you say "jargon" is just any term for something that laypeople wouldn't be familiar with, even if it's the standard/only name for that thing?

[munk-a]

I think that's fair - with the exception of self-descriptive names, and acronyms can further obscure understanding, if you say you've got a Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus sure, it's for... like breathing, underwater... apparently self-contained which I'm not quite certain the significance of but like "Under water breathing thingy" is a very natural interpretation. SCUBA, to contrast, is much more easily recognizable due to pop-culture, but has no naming inherent to it's name, and is generally not written in a way that implies acronym-ness, "Oh, were you wearing your Scuba tank?"

[afarrell]

Yes

[Animats]

> ACH is not a common jargon term

It is for anyone involved with money. However, it is a noun, not a verb.

[M2Ys4U]

Maybe if you live in the US.

[kody]

Agreed. Even after Googling "ACH" I had to reconcile the article's usage of "ACH" as a verb, when it appears to be a electronic payment system.