It's no different in everyday life. This was an appropriate title for the Rust thread, but is too terse for Hacker News.
If I say to my mother "Hannah told me she'd be away for Christmas" we both understand who is meant, my sister. If I say that to my friend Dave it's unclear. Which Hannah? We have a mutual friend called Hannah, I have a sister named Hannah, or maybe I mean the Hannah he works with. So I should be more specific in that context.
Being obliged to be fully specific all the time is no problem for a machine but it's tiresome for humans, so no, I do not agree with "death to abbreviations". Maybe HN rules should encourage people to expand abbreviations when citing material from elsewhere that could be unfamiliar to most readers. As it is, hey, free Internet points for whoever first expands the abbreviation in a comment.
If I say to my mother "Hannah told me she'd be away for Christmas" we both understand who is meant, my sister. If I say that to my friend Dave it's unclear. Which Hannah? We have a mutual friend called Hannah, I have a sister named Hannah, or maybe I mean the Hannah he works with. So I should be more specific in that context.
Being obliged to be fully specific all the time is no problem for a machine but it's tiresome for humans, so no, I do not agree with "death to abbreviations". Maybe HN rules should encourage people to expand abbreviations when citing material from elsewhere that could be unfamiliar to most readers. As it is, hey, free Internet points for whoever first expands the abbreviation in a comment.