“Agnostic” apps?

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<a href=“https://12factor.net/config”>Here</a> we find: 
“and unlike custom config files, or other config mechanisms such as Java System Properties, they are a language- and OS-agnostic standard.”

Programmers are prone to grab words from fields where their knowledge is shaky and apply them to software engineering. An!example I have mentioned before is “technical debt,” where what is really being discussed is not debt, but a failure to maintain one’s capital stock.

I have regularly seen the term “agnostic“ similarly misused. Strictly speaking, “agnostic“ about languages in operating systems what to mean that one believes what language or OS is in use is “unknown or unknowable” (Wikipedia entry on agnosticism). But that’s not what the person writing the above quote means. They mean that this part of the system should be indifferent to what language or OS the system is using, not that these facts are unknowable!

PS: My apologies for the lousy link display at the start of this post: it is a limit of my iPhone blogging software apparently. I will fix it tomorrow when I can get to a “real” computer.

Comments

  1. rob10:20 AM

    Websters captures this new usage:
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic

    ReplyDelete

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