Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jihadjihad 18 days ago
Another one is "surface", like in "across all product surfaces". I've been in the field for 15 years and have never heard that particular usage before.
9 comments

Mine is obsessed with "planes". Data plane, control plane, management plane. Everything is a plane :)
Mine loves "slices". Everything is a slice.
I hate when it starts talking about code in terms of planes. I have no idea what it means. I guess it's better than talking about heaps of spaghetti with noodles connecting to each other, but that would be much closer to what it actually writes.
Think of the planes as plates of spaghetti.
Well, they are just a manifold, so it's fair for them to view every conceptual thing in geometry.
Landing the plane.
See also, surface.
I’ve heard (and used) the term “API surface” a lot…
I do UI design/dev and say "surface up" a lot. Although I don't use the term, in this area people call different container depths as surfaces (base, card, overlay as surface).
Attack surface is another one I use.
Yes, I've always heard it used in this context. I really believe the other use is because someone misheard "service", and it stuck.
That's rather funny! Probably true. "API surface" sounds exactly like a CEO trying to say "API service" without understanding what an API is. lol.
It's pretty common to read "attack surface" in security.
Yeah, I imagine this is a big part of it.
In my brief and abortive foray into education, I discovered that they friggin' love to use "surface" as a verb. As in: This activity surfaces an understanding of the turboencabulation principle for learners. Or somesuch. It's been a while, happily.

Unless you're a submarine, "surface" is not a verb.

Idk. I've always used that verb with clients, usually when I notice either malfeasance or hidden behavior. Like: "I was checking our code for where a half cent of sales tax might be accidentally rounded down, and it surfaced something weird going on at franchise #77 in New Jersey..."
Sure it is.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/surface#dictionar...

> : to come into public view : show up

> letters that have recently surfaced

I find this usage less objectionable than the education jargon. It suggests that we all have a latent understanding of the turboencabulation principle just waiting for the right activity to force air into its ballast tanks and make it pop above the waves.

That said, I don't love this non-education jargon usage for its passive-voiced-ness. The letters didn't "surface" of their own accord. Somebody found them, decided that they were noteworthy, and made the choice to bring them into the public view.

Congratulation! You are a submarine!
Recently read some LLM generated output that mentioned the “center of gravity” within a codebase.

Also have read the term “seam” dozens of times by now, when previously I saw it maybe once or twice over years. Very abstract term.

That one probably comes from maths, where surfaces show up all the time in geometric interpretations of things. I've been involved in more mathsy parts of engineering and I've heard it a lot.
About a decade ago I worked with a product manager who used that phrasing constantly, so it kind of stuck with me.
That is absolutely a normal thing to say
Surface it to say, that's my favorite lobe-earing eggcorn, for all intensive purposes!