Timeline for Propose significant change in the definition of gcd tag
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 28, 2013 at 19:06 | comment | added | user7116 | @JoshCaswell: the same could have been said for WPF or ASP or PHP or whatever comes next...acronyms are part of the software ecosystem. Sometimes they clash, we deal with it when it arises. In this case the right answer is to not use the Mathematics definition (as that topic doesn't deserve a tag on SO) but to use the API definition. Users of SO agree in practice (Grand Central Dispatch >> Greatest Common Divisor), so why let this stand in the way? | |
| Jan 28, 2013 at 18:57 | comment | added | jscs | @six: In other words, it's not so much that we need a [greatest-common-divisor]/[-denominator] tag, it's that it doesn't make sense to have a short, ambiguous tag referring to a topic with such limited recognition (and I am a user of Grand Central Dispatch). | |
| Jan 28, 2013 at 18:54 | comment | added | jscs | Another point to consider, @sixlettervariables, is what happens when the shiny new Android framework "Google's Cool Dongle" is released on the the same day as the "Guido Calculates Derivatives" module, and just a week after the much-anticipated "GNU Cloud Documents" library. Aficianados of each use "GCD", too; why should Grand Central Dispatch own the abbreviation on SO? Just avoid the whole mess and, since it'll be impossible to get rid of gcd altogether, use it for the meaning that's never going to change, and which everyone knows, regardless of platform. | |
| Jan 28, 2013 at 16:31 | comment | added | user7116 | There are probably 2 useful programming questions about greatest common divisors...asked thousands of times by students. There are potentially thousands of useful Grand Central Dispatch questions. Why on earth do we need [gcd] to be greatest common divisor? (I have no skin in the Grand Central Dispatch game, not a tech I use) Maybe on Mathematics would this make sense. | |
| Jan 28, 2013 at 16:18 | comment | added | Robert Ryan | +1 I agree with the problems of such a short, ambiguous tag, and therefore have proposed a synonym between gcd and greatest-common-divisor. | |
| Jan 28, 2013 at 16:17 | vote | accept | Robert Ryan | ||
| Jan 26, 2013 at 8:24 | comment | added | jscs | I might even go so far as to say that gcd should be synonymized to greatest-common-divisor; there's no good reason to have such a short, potentially ambiguous tag. | |
| Jan 26, 2013 at 8:22 | history | answered | jscs | CC BY-SA 3.0 |