Suggestion: Stop using "vector" for computer science
Posted: 2023-08-26, 14:22:31
I suggest stopping using "vector" for dynamic arrays and alike in computer science as a highly misleading, historically incorrect term.
Historically, vector is a mathematical term, it came into use to indicate a dynamic array as a result of "Creativity" of C++ STL library creators, basically just 2 people, without any scientific reasoning in the middle of 1990th, then it was copy-pasted into many other areas. Its usage inevitably leads to confusion of many people with mathematics background, and rightfully so, because it has from very little to nothing to do with the actual vectors.
Do you think it is a good idea to fix the apparent mistakes in terminology like the mentioned terms ? Otherwise, the whole culture of programming is moving towards unintelligible mess, with hundreds and thousands of frameworks using terms far from computers science, highly misleading and non-intuitive (for example, "symphony" framework uses "composer" as a component - imagine 1000+ such other frameworks, in a few decades the whole interoperability and migration would become far from normal scientific theory, more like a deceptive and cumbersome to understand area).
Historically, vector is a mathematical term, it came into use to indicate a dynamic array as a result of "Creativity" of C++ STL library creators, basically just 2 people, without any scientific reasoning in the middle of 1990th, then it was copy-pasted into many other areas. Its usage inevitably leads to confusion of many people with mathematics background, and rightfully so, because it has from very little to nothing to do with the actual vectors.
Do you think it is a good idea to fix the apparent mistakes in terminology like the mentioned terms ? Otherwise, the whole culture of programming is moving towards unintelligible mess, with hundreds and thousands of frameworks using terms far from computers science, highly misleading and non-intuitive (for example, "symphony" framework uses "composer" as a component - imagine 1000+ such other frameworks, in a few decades the whole interoperability and migration would become far from normal scientific theory, more like a deceptive and cumbersome to understand area).