lexicon: four greek words inside your editor
a small dictionary of terms i use daily, with the original sense and what it asks from a design.
automatos
greek: acting of itself, self-moving. entered english as: automatic, automation.
the word describes a thing that carries its own motion. a script run by hand is not automation; it is a keyboard shortcut. automation begins when the system decides when to act, and therefore must also decide what to do when the world is not what it expects.
design demand: if a human has to check it on every run, it is a prompt wearing a cron costume.
kryptos
greek: hidden, secret. entered english as: crypt, cryptography.
the interesting part is what it does not mean. cryptography is not "a secret channel". it is a message that can travel in public and stay private, because the secrecy lives in the key, not the pipe.
design demand: anything whose security depends on the channel being secret is not secured. hidden is a property of the key. the pipe is assumed hostile.
schema
greek: shape, figure, posture. entered english as: schema, schematic.
a database schema is literally a shape. the renaissance borrowed the word for the geometry underneath a painted figure. same idea across three millennia: the shape that everything else hangs from.
design demand: schemas are decisions with long lifetimes. code around them changes weekly; the shape outlives several of its authors. treat it like the foundation it is.
systema
greek: an organized whole, from syn (together) + histanai (to stand). entered english as: system.
things that stand together. not a bag of components, not a pile of services. arrangement is the substance of the word.
design demand: the removal test. take one part away. if what remains is a pile, there was never a system.
one correction, because it matters
algorithm is not greek. it comes from the latinized name of al-khwārizmī, the ninth-century mathematician. robot is czech, from robota, forced labor, via karel čapek's play. algebra is arabic.
half the vocabulary of computing is borrowed, which is its own lesson: engineering has always taken its words from whoever solved the problem first. etymology is documentation that survived every rewrite.
image credits
- cover: Papyrus in Greek regarding tax issues (3rd ca. BC.) by Tilemahos Efthimiadis (by 2.0)
- image: Histria by fusion-of-horizons (by 2.0)