this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 121 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

i have a deep and irrational hatred for the fact that some people call computer programs "apps" now of days

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Some people"? The operating systems themselves call them apps now.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And it's really not that unreasonable. What the user thinks of as an app could be more than 1 program. It makes sense to put an abstraction between users and programs because lots of sophisticated software use separate programs that the end user doesn't care about, just the whole.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think anyone's saying we should only refer to each individual executable file. Just that 'apps' arbitrarily replaced the word 'program' with absolutely no change in definition to make it sound New and Marketable tm.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

What I call an app is a little thing I eat before a big thing.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I regret to inform you it's joever

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

An application program is a computer program designed to carry out a specific task

A howitzer is a projectile weapon designed to fire a specific projectile

Rejoice, your paint guns are now all howitzers!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thankfully the dictionaries get a little more specific. I do want an artillery capable paint gun though, that sounds rad

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I presented the above as a joke and I had faith that the definition of a howitzer wasn't that vague to begin with. angery

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I used to think howitzer was a specific model or even brand of artillery piece, like the Gucci bag of artillery.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The Task Manager in Windows always had an "Applications" tab and a "Processes" tab, going back to Windows 98 at least. "Programs" was always too broad and restricted to being colloquial; the specific word was either application or executable.

What's worth ranting about is whether people have stopped understanding "App" as short for something.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The l33t w4r3z d00dz were calling applications 'appz' since at least the '90s. Then there was that brief period where Apple tried to claim "app store" was short for "apple store" so no one else could say it..

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Actually the proper nomenclature of the time was 'warez'.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

not enough ascii in this comment tbh

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

markdown killed the ascii star

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, it's a regional dialect.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

“What region?”

“…Usenet.”

“I…RC.”

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That is our word and you have no right to use it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

When I was a kid, I thought it was pronounced WHERE-AZ.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Then there was that brief period where Apple tried to claim "app store" was short for "apple store" so no one else could say it..

I'm only surprised they didn't succeed.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago

It's software, and I will not change.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Same, but for appetizers as well.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

"Some people" includes almost all devs who actually make the ~apps~ ~applications~ programs though.

Many of the projects I work on use app to refer to the main object or entrypoint.