[mediascreen]

I understand that orthogonal and unrelated have different meanings. What I'm wondering is: Isn't "orthogonal" much more common on HN (18388 matches in search) than in other places?

I suspect that "orthogonal" is a word programmers fall in love with during some CS class and then overuse because it sounds sciency.

[auggierose]

I think that orthogonal is a more visual word than unrelated. It invokes the image of axes pointing into different directions. I suspect many programmers just like this aspect of the word, while unrelated is somewhat bland, and also usually wrong.