[normalhuman]

Corparate-speak that makes its way into common language is frequently justified post-hoc by subtle differences in meaning like the ones you allude to. The problem is that these differences are personal and subjective. Ask someone else, they might have a different answer. I have had the same discussion multiple times over the equally meaningless and inelegant "going forward".

"Use case" comes from 90s software engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case

Corporate-speak and cliché idioms makes one sound less clever, not more. It might temporarily signal belonging to some crowd (for example, the HN tech crowd), but in the long term it hampers one's ability to communicate in an effective and elegant way.

[meowface]

This seems extremely pedantic. "Use case" as it's used today basically just means "case" or "situation" for a particular project or task or goal (edit: and for a particular individual/group/entity/organization). It's not business jargon or a buzzword term, even if perhaps it started off that way many decades ago.

I can think of countless annoying corporate buzzwords I see all the time on HN or at my job which are totally opaque and useless. "Use case" is two simple English words which anyone, including non-tech people, uses and clearly understands. This is not the hill to die on. I could link so many comments posted in the last week which are infinitely more buzzword-laden and irritating. If you really feel the dire necessity to chastise them, at least pick one of of those.

I do partly agree with you on "moving forward" or "going forward". I'm skeptical the situation was nearly as ambiguous as you suggest (it means "in the future", which is ambiguous, but it's no more ambiguous than saying "in the future", and anyone can easily request clarification if they hear "in the future"), but I had a few managers who said and wrote that like 30 times per day, and it does start to get on your nerves. Perhaps "use case" is similarly overused by some, but it also has a specific and clear meaning which would take longer to say/write than just using the term.

[logifail]

> "Use case" is two simple English words which anyone, including non-tech people, uses and clearly understands

Source?

Where I am "use case" is definitely [still] tech jargon. I know very very few non-tech people who've ever heard it used, much less could give a definition for it.

[normalhuman]

> This seems extremely pedantic. "Use case" as it's used today basically just means "case" or "situation" for a particular project or task or goal. It's not business jargon or a buzzword term, even if perhaps it started off that way many decades ago.

Notice that you are already in contradiction with the first criticism that I received in this thread, where a subtle difference in meaning was proposed.

> it means "in the future", which is ambiguous, but it's no more ambiguous than saying "in the future",

The main point is that it is totally unnecessary, we already have the future tense to talk about what will happen in the future.

The same applies here. Remove the phrase with "use case" and you get exactly the same meaning, with less words and less cringe.

[meowface]

I see your point, but I think it's only redundant if the context of the use case(s) has already been established, in which case you can just refer to the thing itself (directly, or with demonstrative words). If anything, I think the much more redundant and cringey part is the "personal" in "my personal use case". "My use case" sounds fine to me.

"My use case" just generalizes "my {project, job, task, case}(s)". It's not ambiguous, because the intention is to be general. "For me" is a bit more general than that, though, and sometimes you want to be a little more specific.

The specificity hierarchy / subtle difference in meaning goes from "for me" (my attributes) -> "my use case" (my attributes + the case's attributes) -> "my [job/project/whatever]" -> "my [exact thing I'm specifically doing]". I think all can be valid, depending on the context. I maybe should've said "'case' or 'situation' for a particular project or task or goal done by a particular person (or group or organization)" instead (I was implying the latter part), but there's no contradiction here. By contrast, "moving forward" is typically implied and unnecessary no matter the context and can usually be cut as dead weight.

[gmfawcett]

You're picking much too fine a nit here. The OP's use of "personal use case" is not a distracting example of corporate speak. I knew exactly what he meant when he wrote it, and his usage did help to clarify that he was basing his statements on his use of the technology, and not on his personal feelings about it.

But if if this is a hard-stop item for you at this juncture, then we should circle back... I'm sure we can align on this going forward. ;)

[normalhuman]

> You're picking much too fine a nit here.

I think you feel that way because of the HN/tech echo chamber. Nobody says or feels the need to say "use case" outside of such circles.

> But if if this is a hard-stop item for you at this juncture, then we should circle back... I'm sure we can align on this going forward. ;)

Hehe ;)

[chipotle_coyote]

I dunno -- if we're going to focus on the tics and quirks of the HN echo chamber, isn't this level of bikeshedding over the term "use case" kind of peak HN? :)

[gmfawcett]

I don't know... I don't really consider myself part of the HN echo-chamber (who does, I guess?). I hear "use case" fairly regularly here at our university, among non-technical staff in our academic support units. Perhaps we've indoctrinated them over the years...

Regardless, I would argue that "use case" has a quite specific and useful meaning that goes beyond mere corp-speak. I wouldn't use in conversation at a neighbourhood barbecue, but in a technical context (like a discussion of Python) the usage seems perfectly fine.

[NoodleIncident]

> Corparate-speak that makes its way into common language is frequently justified post-hoc by subtle differences in meaning like the ones you allude to.

You seem to have reversed cause and effect here. New words/phrases/jargon comes into common usage when it is useful for communicating something. The difference might be subtle, but people wouldn't use the word if they didn't think that it was an important distinction to make.

[sullyj3]

I really like the book "Death Sentence" by Don Watson, which eloquently skewers this kind of corporate jargon.