User:Mwn3d/Word mincing

I've noticed a couple instances of people getting too technical. Maybe people are trying to be cute. Maybe they're trolling. Maybe they're just computer programmers and (like computers) they try to take everything literally. In any case, such rigidity gets in the way of lots of things, and I have decided to voice my opinions about some of the more prominent "arguments" as I notice them.

Function vs. Subroutine vs. Method vs. whatever term your language uses for it

For the purposes of tasks on this site, these words are all pretty much interchangeable. Getting all bent out of shape because a task says "function" and you want to do it in assembly or some language where you don't really have a nice way to return a value just gets in the way of things. Do the best you can and note the difference in behavior. If it goes against the intention of the task, then we will discuss it. In general it's probably OK not to match up exactly on little things like that.

Random vs. Pseudo-random

I don't think there is a language out there that has a true random number generator built in. When we say "random" in a task we probably mean "pseudo-random". That's just what people call it because saying "pseudo-random" is a mouthful. Unless the task is to create a pseudo-random number generator or receive truly random numbers from a true random number generator (random.org or something), these words are also interchangeable.

More to come as I see/remember similar situations.