I've got a linguistics minor. The concept here is prescriptivism versus descriptivism. The linguistics community overall has a huge emphasis on descriptivism. Trying to enforce consistency of language is a Sisyphean task, and in a lot of ways is an element of imperialism. Words change, grow, gain and lose definitions and shades over time. Document the new uses, and let people live their lives.
I don't see things in such absolutist terms as that. For everyday language, sure, I'm more than happy to go with the flow. For technical language we need a relatively stable, agreed upon terminology.
Terms that flow and change too freely makes communication very difficult and often leads to people having pointless arguments due to fundamentally misunderstanding what each person is saying. And I do disagree that it's Sisyphean. Raising awareness can and does influence how words are used (especially within a group).
The meaning of a term depends on its usage. That is not a matter of opinion, it's how language, including technical language, works.
Currently "OOP" roughly means [Alan Kay's vision] or [Java-like]. That is an imprecise and mostly useless definition but it's the one it has, whether we like it or not. A stable terminology is desirable and that's why we shouldn't redefine "OOP".
Think of it like an API. What's more backwards-compatible: changing the behavior of oop() or deprecating it in favor of javaLikeProgramming() and kayProgramming() ?
fwiw, a minor (so, ~4 uni classes) is not what I would flex as credentialization in a subject. Especially when you go on to bring up such an elementary part of linguistics.
It's kind of like introducing yourself as a compsci minor and then explaining OOP vs FP. I'd just leave off the creds, there's no need.
> fwiw, a minor (so, ~4 uni classes) is not what I would flex as credentialization in a subject.
It's not a "flex," it's an honest contextualization of an anecdote. They certainly studied more linguistics than I did. I, uh... had a minor... crush on a linguistics major I met through the teaching union, and we had a few casual conversations about their thesis? Now that's a weird flex.
The point of their comment was not to introduce the well-known concept; it was to relay their impression of the culture that they experienced. Please be more charitable with folks' contributions here.
The concept has historically gets an order of magnitude more push back without the tiny amount of creds to go along with it. People really latch on to the English teacher style prescriptivist view and assume that linguistics in general takes that view too.
