In the spirit of the many falsehoods programmers believe about {thing} lists, I present falsehoods programmers believe about words.
My experiences with linguistics and engineering have led me to the realization that there are numerous falsehoods programmers believe about words and shockingly no one has seemingly written a falsehoods programmers believe about words yet.1 This is a blend of literal words and writing systems – mostly because text is what we interact with most frequently when we interact with language.2
I was talking with a colleague the other day about the particular ways Large Language Model (llm) output gets under our skin. Neither of us was making a grand claim about the technology; we were comparing notes on an ordinary work task. He was tired of being congratulated. The model would give him perfectly serviceable code and then congratulate him for asking such thoughtful questions to prompt that output. I, on the other hand, was tired of the overly explanatory tone: the long preamble, the insistence on explaining why every small thing mattered.