Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python

7 Programming Jargon

In the XKCD comic “Up Goer Five” (https://xkcd.com/1133/), the webcomic’s artist Randall Munroe created a technical schematic for the Saturn V rocket using only the 1,000 most common English words. The comic breaks down all the technical jargon into sentences a young child could understand. But it also highlights why we can’t explain everything using simple terms: The explanation “Thing to help people escape really fast if there’s a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space” might be easier to understand for a lay audience than “Launch Escape System.” But it’s too verbose for NASA engineers to ...