an excellent specimen
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My pet peeve: individuals who use lower case letters for first person singular
"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants" Chuckles the clown
I or | or l or i am sorry i am causing your kind self this irritation .
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BernardIE5317 wrote:
i have finally found what i believe is a superior term
Not that I see. From google
Specimen: an example of something such as a product or piece of work, regarded as typical of its class or group
snippet: a small piece or brief extract.
The correct usage for the second would be when one presents code which cannot, by itself, successfully compile. And to my mind, as with the definition, implies that is 'small'. Consider the 'specimen' in the following Largest and heaviest animals - Wikipedia[^] "with the largest known specimen being 33.6 m (110.2 ft) long and the largest weighted specimen being 190 tonnes" That is using the word to refer to an entire animal. (Not small.) And it implies the possibility that other specimens might exist which could be larger. Following is a paper related to programming which is using 'specimen' which fits the definition above also but which presumably also provides code that can compile. (Pay wall I believe but synopsis provides information.) A specimen of parallel programming: parallel merge sort implementation: ACM Inroads: Vol 1, No 4[^]
greetings kind regards from Miriam Webster : a : an individual, item, or part considered typical of a group, class, or whole b : a portion or quantity of material for use in testing, examination, or study 'b' suits my purpose as stated i find the term utilized upon discussion / study of brief samples / specimens of code intended to be exemplar of more general usage .
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Would "code extract" be acceptable?
extract is a very good term when used as noun. but the terms snippet and sample would be understood equally as well. def: noun something extracted. a passage taken from a book, article, etc.; excerpt; quotation.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
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greetings & kind regards it did not occur to myself the Honorable Mr. MacCutchan was referring to the spelling/formatting of my message . i do not abhor capital letters nor do i find sadistic pleasure in placing a space before the period . it is simply that i find it more pleasing to the eye .
Our corner room was airy and pleasing to the eye. "A piece has got to be pleasing to the eye. The Neon is a surprisingly pleasing to the eye.
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Hmm, possibly so, but which language would that be?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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I've a suspicion that the keenness on pillaging was the other way round during an attempt to paint the entire world map pink. :)
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greetings kind regards from Miriam Webster : a : an individual, item, or part considered typical of a group, class, or whole b : a portion or quantity of material for use in testing, examination, or study 'b' suits my purpose as stated i find the term utilized upon discussion / study of brief samples / specimens of code intended to be exemplar of more general usage .
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greetings kind regards this is a specimen of a pet peeve i wish to trouble your kind selves with for no logical reason i can think of . i have always been irritated with the use of the term "snippet" upon reference to a brief sample of code . i have finally found what i believe is a superior term for no other reason than it does not irritate me id est "specimen" . perhaps i will be successful in changing the common nomenclature as i believe i may have been some years ago id est late 70s early 80s whilst the term "excellent" entered common usage . well i am stating here and now i believe i and not Keanu Reeves may have been the responsible party . kind regards "Back to regularly scheduled program"
I doubt specimen will catch on. It implies something kept behind glass to prevent damage/contamination. When teaching something you do not want to distance your audience from the code in any way. You have already used probably the best word - sample. You could also use example. I doubt any of these words will get common use though. Unfortunately the term snippet has become entrenched in some peoples minds as the correct term for a short piece of code.
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Exactly. Imagine going for a job interview and being asked to provide a specimen ... (Maybe it's just a UK thing, but the above phrase almost inevitably implies of wee.)
Telegraph marker posts ... nothing to do with IT Phasmid email discussion group ... also nothing to do with IT Beekeeping and honey site ... still nothing to do with IT
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I or | or l or i am sorry i am causing your kind self this irritation .
Then demonstrate your sorryness by not doing it.
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greetings kind regards this is a specimen of a pet peeve i wish to trouble your kind selves with for no logical reason i can think of . i have always been irritated with the use of the term "snippet" upon reference to a brief sample of code . i have finally found what i believe is a superior term for no other reason than it does not irritate me id est "specimen" . perhaps i will be successful in changing the common nomenclature as i believe i may have been some years ago id est late 70s early 80s whilst the term "excellent" entered common usage . well i am stating here and now i believe i and not Keanu Reeves may have been the responsible party . kind regards "Back to regularly scheduled program"
Unfortunately "specimen" already has a meaning in English, and it means "An example of $CATEGORY". The phrase "the following specimen of C++" would literally mean "The following content is an example of C++ programming", while "the following snippet of C++" means "The following content is only a portion of a whole C++ program". You are going to find it difficult to get people to agree to overload an existing well-defined word with a new unrelated meaning. I'm not saying it's impossible to assign new made-up meanings to existing words, I'm just saying that's it's an uphill battle with low likelihood of success, especially in the case of overloading a well-defined and universally understood word. What you propose is no different from proposing that the word 'and' is replaced by the word 'green'. You'll just confuse people when you say "Me green my brother went out green got snacks".
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greetings kind regards from Miriam Webster : a : an individual, item, or part considered typical of a group, class, or whole b : a portion or quantity of material for use in testing, examination, or study 'b' suits my purpose as stated i find the term utilized upon discussion / study of brief samples / specimens of code intended to be exemplar of more general usage .
Quote:
'b' suits my purpose as stated i find the term utilized upon discussion / study of brief samples / specimens of code intended to be exemplar of more general usage
Maybe you should have used the example given as a guide - the portion in question is not a unique portion. In order to count as a specimen, using the example given in the section you quote, it must be identical or consistent with the whole from which the specimen was taken.
b: a portion or quantity of material for use in testing, examination, or study
a urine specimen
I'm guessing that English isn't your first language from the incorrect phrasing of "exemplar" (which is a noun) and should be "an exemplar of". I can understand, then, why you would consider "specimen" to be related to "snippet".
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Then demonstrate your sorryness by not doing it.
I or | or l or i am ashamed to admit to some irritation .
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Or a specimen may simply be something (whole or in part) to be studied, examined, or tested. They have jars for that.
also microscopes .
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Quote:
'b' suits my purpose as stated i find the term utilized upon discussion / study of brief samples / specimens of code intended to be exemplar of more general usage
Maybe you should have used the example given as a guide - the portion in question is not a unique portion. In order to count as a specimen, using the example given in the section you quote, it must be identical or consistent with the whole from which the specimen was taken.
b: a portion or quantity of material for use in testing, examination, or study
a urine specimen
I'm guessing that English isn't your first language from the incorrect phrasing of "exemplar" (which is a noun) and should be "an exemplar of". I can understand, then, why you would consider "specimen" to be related to "snippet".
thank you for the correction to my incorrect usage . one such error and you deduced i am from Mars . perhaps my green complexion gave it away .
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Unfortunately "specimen" already has a meaning in English, and it means "An example of $CATEGORY". The phrase "the following specimen of C++" would literally mean "The following content is an example of C++ programming", while "the following snippet of C++" means "The following content is only a portion of a whole C++ program". You are going to find it difficult to get people to agree to overload an existing well-defined word with a new unrelated meaning. I'm not saying it's impossible to assign new made-up meanings to existing words, I'm just saying that's it's an uphill battle with low likelihood of success, especially in the case of overloading a well-defined and universally understood word. What you propose is no different from proposing that the word 'and' is replaced by the word 'green'. You'll just confuse people when you say "Me green my brother went out green got snacks".
re/ "... a portion of a whole C++ program" in my encounters w/ the term i could find no whole program anywhere in sight .
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thank you for the correction to my incorrect usage . one such error and you deduced i am from Mars . perhaps my green complexion gave it away .
Quote:
thank you for the correction to my incorrect usage . one such error and you deduced i am from Mars . perhaps my green complexion gave it away .
Well, on the internet it's not rare to read posts from people who don't have English as a primary language.[1] And it's not like I leapt to conclusions after just
one such error
Look at it from the point of view of a native English speaker: you misunderstood the dictionary definition of "specimen" even with the explanatory example given in the dictionary that you quoted, and you misunderstood the usage of "exemplar". I meant no disrespect by assuming English was not your primary language; I'd expect a similar response if I, in my secondary language, confused two unrelated terms and used a third term incorrectly, all in the space of a single paragraph. [1] I myself am bilingual, and I know that I make trivial errors when speaking in my second language (first is English). I don't automatically jump to accusations that the other party, who's a native speaker in that language, considers me an alien. PS. Have you typed "what is the difference between a snippet and a specimen?" into an English-language LLM? After all, it's a Large Language Model, so something like ChatGPT is going to easily be able to provide the difference in meaning between two extremely common words.
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re/ "... a portion of a whole C++ program" in my encounters w/ the term i could find no whole program anywhere in sight .
BernardIE5317 wrote:
re/ "... a portion of a whole C++ program" in my encounters w/ the term i could find no whole program anywhere in sight .
Well, obviously not. When someone says "here's a snippet", why would they post the whole program? If they were showing the whole program they wouldn't say "here's a snippet", would they?
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I doubt specimen will catch on. It implies something kept behind glass to prevent damage/contamination. When teaching something you do not want to distance your audience from the code in any way. You have already used probably the best word - sample. You could also use example. I doubt any of these words will get common use though. Unfortunately the term snippet has become entrenched in some peoples minds as the correct term for a short piece of code.
Quote:
Unfortunately the term snippet has become entrenched in some peoples minds as the correct term for a short piece of code.
I think the problem the OP is going to run into is that "snippet" already had a meaning decades before the first computer was even invented, and it's the same meaning as used for code as it was used for newspapers. If the word had a different meaning in the context of computers, OP might have a point, but right now arguing that a well-defined word with well-defined meaning should mean something else when computers are involved is difficult, and it is doubly hard when the replacement is another existing word with a completely unrelated meaning. If I were propose "I don't like the word 'content' in the context of programming, I think we should replace it with 'automobile'", I'd expect similar confusion from my audience as OP is getting.
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Quote:
thank you for the correction to my incorrect usage . one such error and you deduced i am from Mars . perhaps my green complexion gave it away .
Well, on the internet it's not rare to read posts from people who don't have English as a primary language.[1] And it's not like I leapt to conclusions after just
one such error
Look at it from the point of view of a native English speaker: you misunderstood the dictionary definition of "specimen" even with the explanatory example given in the dictionary that you quoted, and you misunderstood the usage of "exemplar". I meant no disrespect by assuming English was not your primary language; I'd expect a similar response if I, in my secondary language, confused two unrelated terms and used a third term incorrectly, all in the space of a single paragraph. [1] I myself am bilingual, and I know that I make trivial errors when speaking in my second language (first is English). I don't automatically jump to accusations that the other party, who's a native speaker in that language, considers me an alien. PS. Have you typed "what is the difference between a snippet and a specimen?" into an English-language LLM? After all, it's a Large Language Model, so something like ChatGPT is going to easily be able to provide the difference in meaning between two extremely common words.
Member 13301679 wrote:
Well, on the internet it's not rare to read posts from people who don't have English as a primary language.[1]
In my working group many years ago, there was Robert, born and raised in Norway but with a Scottish mother. Then there was Linda, born and raised in England; she came to Norway a couple years earlier. And there was Ellen, Norwegian born and raised, but she had for 30 years worked as a top level secretary, responsible for the external correspondence of large multi-national corporations in the US and France. Robert claimed that it was very easy to hear that Ellen is not a native English speaker - because she spoke it perfectly! She would never make those "errors" (due to sloppiness, laziness or whatever) that every native speaker makes in his native tongue, in any language. Every now and then he pointed out something Linda said, "Ellen would never have said that! It is not perfect English, the way she speaks". Yet, to most people Linda sounded perfectly like an Englishman (as she was!). Another story from that same group: There were two other guys there, Alex from Australia and John from USA. I was going to make a presentation to customers, and was preparing some "PowerPoints" (it wasn't really PPT, but similar). One constant problem when switching between Norwegian and English. I wasn't sure that I had picked the right one, so I went to British Linda's cubicle to ask her. No, rather than xxx, you should rather use yyy! This was overheard by the Australian Alex, who protested: No, you should use zzz! The disagreement caught USA John's attention, who got up and insisted: The correct would be www! The three native English speakers were on the border of going into a fistfight over this (the only thing they could agree about was that my initial proposal was not the right preposition to use), and the group leader had to interfere to calm down the argument. I most certainly learned from this that anyone who claims something to be The Correct Wording in English is a person not to be trusted in English language matters. :-) And it does affect my reading of this thread :-) (Unfortunately, I do not remember neither my first, ditched, proposal nor the three alternatives - it is too long ago. It really doesn't matter for the point of the story.)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
