Mutual incomprehensibility and a shared vocabulary
<disclaimer>As part of my job I frequently end up translating between two parties nominally speaking the same language with a 50% to 100% overlap in vocabulary where there is only a 0% to 20% overlap in the meaning of the share vocabulary. </disclaimer>
I am frequently surprised at how many people don’t place any value in defining key vocabulary before beginning a discussion. In particular I have recently been involved in several industry consortia where there was a debase as to the merit of defining key terms at the beginning of a document being developed as a standard. I find this debate particularly annoying as it was clear during the conference call the different member of the committee were using the same words to mean vastly different things. I would have though the rat hole the discussion dived into as to the meaning of terms would have settled the question of defining the terms in the document but no such luck. Ah well, the wonders of committee work. (I did get the section of vocabulary included in the document it just too more work than it should have.)
My current pet peeve of shared vocabulary with inconsistent meaning:
Define the following terms: thread, task, process, job, strand, program, and context
Now pretend you are a SW designer instead of a HW designer, or vice-versa, and redefine. How many terms had the same definition?