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by bryanlarsen 394 days ago
Agreed. There are almost certainly more people who know what "BGP" is than know what "Border Gateway Protocol" is.

But it still would have been a favor to the original commenter to write "BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)". If you write just "BGP" you annoy the reader who doesn't know what it is; they'll think it's your fault. But if you write "BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)", they still won't know what it is but they won't be irritated at you anymore.

2 comments

Someone linked a document a few weeks ago that address the topic of abbreviations and when the abbreviation is the common form it is acceptable to just use the abbreviation.

I don’t think anyone in their right mind would open every article with HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS( Cascading Style Sheets).

For networking it would be the same with BGP/OSPF/RIP.

But it is it a networking post? It's a networking blog in general, but this post is clearly targeted at people interested in a rust scripting language and should expect wider distribution.
Funnily enough, I had no idea what "BGP" meant until I saw "Border Gateway Protocol" and then remembered "oh yeah the router thing".

I did a networking course in school, and haven't touched it since.