[normalhuman]

> For my personal use case at least, this timeline worked out well for me.

Hint for Hacker News commenters: 99% of the time, if your phrase includes the term "use case", you can safely just delete it and lose no meaning. It's just a way to say "for me" or "for them" that sounds more technical but really isn't.

In this case, you could say "This timeline worked out well for me".

[gjm11]

To me, "for me" and "for my use case" mean subtly but genuinely different things.

"For me" highlights the fact that my preferences, character, skills, etc., are different from other people's. Something might work well for me but badly for someone else because I happen to be good at working around its quirks, or bad at noticing its faults, or just not interested in the things it doesn't do.

"For my use case" highlights the fact that the things I need to do are different from other people's. Something might be good for my use case but bad for others' because I don't need very high performance but they do, or because I need the gostak to be able to distim the doshes backwards but they don't.

If I move on to doing different work and someone else takes my place, I expect something that works well "for me" to continue being useful for me but not for them, and something that works well "for my use case" to be useful for them but not for me.

[normalhuman]

Corparate-speak that makes its way into common language is frequently justified post-hoc by subtle differences in meaning like the ones you allude to. The problem is that these differences are personal and subjective. Ask someone else, they might have a different answer. I have had the same discussion multiple times over the equally meaningless and inelegant "going forward".

"Use case" comes from 90s software engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_case

Corporate-speak and cliché idioms makes one sound less clever, not more. It might temporarily signal belonging to some crowd (for example, the HN tech crowd), but in the long term it hampers one's ability to communicate in an effective and elegant way.

[bradenb]

I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but HN has a history of comments like this that criticize other comments and add nothing to the discussion. Mine is another example, but since you got the ball rolling I figure I might as well chime in.

I think the grandparent's usage of "use case" was totally fine. It wasn't distracting and it didn't change my reading of that comment in any way, shape, or form.

[normalhuman]

> HN has a history of comments like this that criticize other comments and add nothing to the discussion

I disagree. HN is a place that seems to pride itself on the quality of its discussions, and on a higher intellectual caliber when compared to other Internet discussion venues. Surely a good command of language is part of that?

[skywhopper]

Hint for Hacker News commenters: 100% of the time, if your comment includes grammar or style advice, you can safely delete it and the discussion will lose no value. It's just a way to say "I'm smart" or "look at me" that sounds helpful but really isn't.

In this case, you could have said nothing.

[cheez]

Are you sure you are indeed a normal human?

[jedberg]

I used "use case" specifically because I was referring to business use cases.

[fortydegrees]

Same with 'utilize' -> 'use'

[partialrecall]

It's not restricted to tech. Cops do it too:

"This particular individual" -> "this person"

[ben509]

I've heard "orientate" for "orient" quite a few times, though maybe it was occidental.

[teekert]

And 'A.I.' -> 'Algorithm'