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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Software Engineering and Dreamers
Date: 1997/05/24
Message-ID: <dewar.864473415@merv>#1/1
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Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-24T00:00:00+00:00
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Kaz said

<<That's another pet peeve of mine: using ``technology'' with reference to
software. I've noticed that some hardware manfuacturers have been using the
term ``hardware technology'' in their marketing propaganda since it's no
longer understood what the word really means.

Software is not technology; the stuff that it runs on is technology.>>

Well, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, you can declare that
"words mean what I want them to mean" [not a literal quote :-)]
but in normal English usage, technology is a very broad word. For example,
the definitions in the OED are:

1. A discourse or treatise on an art or arts; the scientific study of the
practical or industrial arts.

2. The terminology of a particular art or subject; technical nomenclature.

So if in your lexicon it applies to hardware and not software, you are
using the word in a peculiar idiosyncratic way, which others will not
understand unless you warn them of this idiosyncrasy!

Certainly you cannot have a pet peeve that others do not share this
non-standard viewpoint!