On 27/10/2021 12.29, Stefan Ram wrote: > dn <pythonl...@danceswithmice.info> writes: >> On 27/10/2021 11.16, Stefan Ram wrote: >>> The Mental Game of Python - Raymond Hettinger (PyBay 2019) >>> | "The computer gives us words that do ### things. > ... >> Alternately, if your question was to identify the mumbled word, it is >> (seemed to me to be) "does". > > Thanks! > > Yes, my question was about the word at the place of the > "###". It does not even seem mumbled to me, but pronounced > with certainty and intention. That's why it makes me wonder. > As if there was a term "does things".
That is a colloquialism: - my computer does things - my program[me] does stuff The "stuff" is something of a euphemism. In our profession, I would suggest it is used to avoid detail, eg as a 'signal' to a non-IT person that a more detailed answer would likely bore, or 'go over your head'. In PM-circles we identify the beginning and end of a project - the rest of the project plan 'stuff', is known as 'the miracle that happens in the middle'. Want more detail? Do we have more detail? What do I know? If a dog owner said: "my dog does things" it would again be a euphemism, but in this case employed to avoid saying something distasteful, ie that the puppy is not (yet) house-trained. That said, I suspect if you tried to use it in an English (language/literature) essay, the teacher/prof would take exception to such informality, and demand a 'better' noun! Believe it or not, my second trainee-discussion of the day included a question similarly-worded: 'why does the computer/interpreter/run-time do these things?'. Rather than 'literature', I taught this guy one of my favorite excursions into the world of poetry (the specific type of poetic stuff is "doggerel"): I really hate this dumb* machine, I wish that they would sell it. It never does quite what I want, but only what I tell it! * you might regard this word as a euphemism for another Upon which note, and your observation that I am no English-major, it's probably time we went to do things... -- Regards =dn -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
