WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 24102647

(no title)

flywheel | 5 years ago

Whoever the first developer was that used "deprecated" got it kind of wrong, the word should have been "depreciated".

Deprecate: "express disapproval of."

Depreciate: "diminish in value over a period of time."

I kind of cringe when other developers say "deprecated".

Edit: Versioning and not removing APIs is kind of the way to go, so you don't break client apps that possibly can't be updated easily or at all. "Depreciated" is a far better word to use with a far better outcome. AWS versions their APIs, they don't remove old ones. "I disapprove of using this API and we're taking it away at some random date" vs "this isn't the latest API, use the current one for new development" seems like a pretty stark difference in thinking to me. YMMV.

discuss

order

jrochkind1|5 years ago

Nope.

It is deprecated -- it's use is disapproved of, you should stop using it. In the future it will go away but for now it works, so you can use it, but its use is discouraged.

Depreciated doesn't make any sense -- the value of the deprecated API does not diminish over time. It works, until it stops working. It's on or off. It doesn't work less and less every month or anything. It currently still works completely, but is deprecated -- that is, discouraged. At some point in the future, it will stop working, completely.

the rest of us don't just kind of but REALLY cringe when people say "depreciate" when they mean "deprecate". They are different words, "deprecated" is the right one, it is intentional, it is the word.

Sorry, you are the one using the wrong word.

flywheel|5 years ago

Yeah, nope yourself. It seems like a lot of people aren't really thinking this through very much.

And that is absolutely the wrong way to approach API development. An API that is being sun-setted should never be removed, because older clients could still use it but sometimes can't be upgraded to newer clients. Removing a v1 API breaks those clients and it's a shitty thing to do to users. Yeah, people should be building NEW things with it, but there's no reason to look at the v1 API with "disgust" as "deprecated" implies - It's simply an older version that should remain functional, if your system is worth half a shit. AWS doesn't terminate older API versions, they just create new versions. Or you can be like Facebook and "deprecate" stuff and just shut it down before your official shutdown date, or not give any notice at all - that's REALLY a fun culture to work in, I guess, for them. "deprecated" is a really negative word, and doesn't even really translate to anything good in terms of software development. It's my opinion that "depreciated" is a far better word and far better outcome when used in software development instead of "deprecated". YMMV.

eigenvector|5 years ago

Isn't deprecated actually correct here?

It means the feature still works, but will be removed in the future or is no longer supported. There also be may a new implementation of it that the developer would like you to use, hence the warning that it's deprecated.

Depreciation implies a rate of change over time, which isn't the case. Today we deprecate feature X, and in two years we plan remove it. It never depreciates.

tines|5 years ago

But "express disapproval of" is exactly the meaning intended when we say that a feature is deprecated. It signifies that it is best practice not to use it.

harha|5 years ago

If it’s given as a warning then yes, e.g. the dplyr package in R sometimes outputs “feature xyz is deprecated and will be removed in version x.x”.

Often though it’s used when the feature is already removed, i.e., it’s not only best practice not to use it, but also impossible with that version.

hamburglar|5 years ago

This is a jaw-droppingly arrogant attitude. You're trying to justify your own incorrect usage by asserting that the person who coined the term decades ago "got it kind of wrong"? And you cringe when others get it right?

"Depreciated" is absolutely the wrong term, because it implies that the value is less, when the intent is to communicate "this is still fully functional, but you are warned away from it because it is targeted for future removal." Deprecated.

TallGuyShort|5 years ago

Feels like I often see it used to retire APIs that are now understood to be unsafe, insecure, or otherwise a bad practice for some reason. It gets replaced with an API that does not inherently have that problem, and the old one is in deprecated. it feels like "expressing disapproval of" is the right definition in that case. It's only there for a migration period to happen more gracefully, but its continued use is frowned upon, and not just because it will eventually be removed.

ineedasername|5 years ago

If you deconstruct the original latin that forms the word, it's literal translation is something like "ask to go away"

de == away

prek == ask

pacoverdi|5 years ago

In French, we have an equivalent for "depreciate": déprécier. But we don't have a close relative for "deprecate" (which translates to "désapprouver, dénigrer" and would never be used for an API).

We tend to use the terms "déprécié" (~depreciated) or "déprécaté" (~deprecated but not valid French).

On the other hand, "deprecate" seems to also translate to "mark as obsolete" according to https://www.wordreference.com/enfr/deprecate

I guess both terms make sense but I would keep using "deprecated".

cjaybo|5 years ago

The first definition is intended and more fitting for the usages of "deprecated" I've encountered.

Xophmeister|5 years ago

I used to always use "depreciated" until I was embarrassingly corrected one day :P

hamburglar|5 years ago

To be frank, grandparent sounds like someone who was corrected one day, and rather than learn something and move on, dug in and developed a detailed justification for why the rest of the world was mistaken so he can cringe about their ignorance.

theodric|5 years ago

You could not be more wrong if you practiced every day https://www.etymonline.com/word/deprecate#etymonline_v_29603