Know Your English - 3

This statement, one of my all time favourite, was made in one of the meetings, “Let’s templatize the offering so that the implementation of the solution and the quality of consulting in new sites is consistent and redundancies are reduced”. Believe me, I was traumatized when I was hit with that statement. The rest of the meeting is a blur and it took me a year to fully understand what was intended. If the statement above caused you consternation, this post is dedicated to you. And if it didn’t, I don’t believe you :)

 

Let me today discuss a very important aspect of modern English language; vocabulary that is a must in anyone’s repertoire of words – (loud symphony of trumpets, drums and cymbals) ladies and gentlemen, hold your breaths for an elucidation on the language of the software industry (orchestra fades). The importance of this language arises from the fact that the composition of any group nowadays consists of software guys atleast to an extent of 50% (if you are unfortunate enough to be in a group of Telugus, in a Telugu marriage for eg, the software dominance could be as high as 90%). And knowing how weird English (software) is firsthand and often being guilty of going overboard in its usage, I deem it my duty to tear the veil and reveal the idiosyncrasies of this latest addition (to be referred to as English-S henceforth) to the babel of existing languages. So without any further ado, lets roll up our sleeves and get ready to get our hands dirty.

 

FYI: This is one combination of letters that figures in the most abused list; if the keys for “F”, “Y”, “I” on the keyboard had a right to legal recourse, the software industry would have been engulfed in an avalanche of litigation on over use and physical abuse. FYI is English-S for “For Your Information”. It is used in multiple ways, sometimes to showoff one’s brilliance, other times to expose someone’s ignorance, still other times to scare people witless. FYI comes with various suffixes: 

• FYIO: For Your Information Only. This is used to make the recipient feel privileged, make him/her feel as though (s)he is being let into a closely guarded state secret.  
• FYIA: For Your Information and Action. This is a pressure tactic of the lazy; the sender has reached that state of inactivity that he delegates with aplomb and does it telegraphically. Pity the poor receiver. 
• FYIIA: For Your Information and Immediate Action. Now this is one term that must be banned by the Geneva Convention. What the sender intends is “I care a damn whether it’s a Sunday or whether you are sick. Better complete it or its your posterior on fire.” The sender is undoubtedly a lazy moron. 

PFA: The next most abused acronym, PFA means “Please Find Attached”. This acronym is usually combined with the first to a devastating effect, a gory image of one’s future if the activity referred is not accomplished is clearly depicted. Imagine a mail whose only content is “PFA FYIIA”. It’s a stout heart that doesn’t stop there and then after a single look at the size of the acromyn .

 

Platform: Next time you are in Hyderabad bus stand on a Sunday night waiting to board a bus to Bangalore, and it happens that a person accosts you asking which platform you are on, don’t look upwards and read out the platform number; you might be rewarded with a look of utter derision for your effort. The software engineer friend of yours (come on now, if you haven’t concluded that it’s a software guy even after reading the first part of the first sentence, you are in an urgent need for a course in demographics) would beam at you if your reply is to the effect that you are on some “J2EE” or “dot net” platform. Now don’t ask me what “dot net” or “J2EE” is; after a deep study running close to 3 years, and mind you I could be totally wrong here, I have concluded that they are some sort of grammar rules for the language that humans and computer use to communicate. Anyway dear reader, its now an accepted fact that platforms are no longer those pieces of land where you could buy chips and popcorn of doubtful quality while waiting to board a bus/train and warming up for the tussle that boarding the bus/train would entail. You can no more meet friends on a platform, you meet only ones and zeros that are out to terrorize you to submission.

 

Dropdown: No, I didn’t tell you to drop down onto the floor or to drop something down. A dropdown in the modern dictionary would be listed as a technique used by the software industry to help you select one (and only one) of the many available options (for eg, either a scotch, whiskey or beer). It’s the computer’s way of saying, “I know you are a moron and that you wouldn’t be able to restrict yourself to only one selection so here I am to enforce and ensure only one selection is made”. You know what, I would love to tell the system, “You moron, you drop down and die!!”

 

Key Takeaways: There were those days when takeaways implied that you went to your favourite hotel and after stuffing yourself with all the good stuff, you ask the hovering waiter to pack the rest of the spread so that you can enjoy it at leisure. If today, you are told at the end of a meeting that there are takeaways, do not repeat DO NOT salivate and look around for containers; the time of takeaways that refer to food is long past. Takeaways now a days are those boring things scribbled on your notepad during that dreary meeting you just attended. And key takeaways are those scribblings against which you drew those caricatures of hangman, vomit etc.

 

Production: This is a very finicky term, yet don’t worry; fickle though it might be, I believe that having come this far, you are adroit enough to deal with this term. Production, in the saner days of yore, meant that there was a factory in which a whole lot of complex machinery and efficient men got together and made stuff that eased many a burden. Cometh software and the word dons a new meaning. On the first day of work, I was told by the VP that our company had live production sites in scores of countries. The list sounded impressive, but I wondered, “Why is it that, when world comes to India/China for cheap labour, we are putting up production sites in other counties? And even bigger question, what would the site do – I mean all that you need to do is write the software code on a CD and the product is ready. A simple desktop setup with a CD writer would do right?” That is when the meaning of production was made clear to me. A production site, in software parlance, is a place where the software is being used. If Tata Motors was a software company, then they would call your house a production site if you happen to use Manza. Production indeed….

 

I have hardly scratched the surface and yet it’s time to close the lesson. English-S mirrors a field after war, there are too many unexploded munitions strewn about; unwary handling could lead to damaged psyche. So with this briefest of briefs, I ardently hope that you would be meet with more that the usual succes when you wade through these tumultuous waters of English-S.