General > General Technical Chat
Do semiconductor datasheets suck?
EPAIII:
Well, I have lived in the US for almost 80 years and this is the first time I have heard that one.
Way back in elementary school I do remember one of my teachers telling the class that you should ALWAYS explain what an acronym means the first time you use it in any place. It is just common courtesy.
--- Quote from: ebastler on November 26, 2023, 09:42:39 pm ---May I propose one more rule of thumb?
--- Quote from: 16bitanalogue on November 26, 2023, 08:02:55 pm ---EILI5
--- End quote ---
Avoid acronyms unless they are really standard terminology. If you have to use them, define them. ;)
I had to Google that one. Maybe it's a common meme in the US, but I had not come across it.
--- End quote ---
tooki:
I’m American too and I’ve never seen that acronym before, either. I don’t think it’s very common.
magic:
It's reddit slang, which means not knowing it is probably a good thing. Too late for me :palm:
VK3DRB:
--- Quote from: EPAIII on December 02, 2023, 07:10:48 am ---Well, I have lived in the US for almost 80 years and this is the first time I have heard that one.
Way back in elementary school I do remember one of my teachers telling the class that you should ALWAYS explain what an acronym means the first time you use it in any place. It is just common courtesy.
--- Quote from: ebastler on November 26, 2023, 09:42:39 pm ---May I propose one more rule of thumb?
--- Quote from: 16bitanalogue on November 26, 2023, 08:02:55 pm ---EILI5
--- End quote ---
Avoid acronyms unless they are really standard terminology. If you have to use them, define them. ;)
I had to Google that one. Maybe it's a common meme in the US, but I had not come across it.
--- End quote ---
--- End quote ---
It's not an acronym. It is an initialism. Know the difference.
Datasheets generally appropriately use acronyms and initialisms if they are from a reputable company like Analog Devices and many others. Know your audience. IBM overdid abbreviations to the extreme without necessarily defining them. I know because I worked there for 18 years.
I do find the excessive use of initialisms and acronyms in embedded code or net labels on schematics, incredibly annoying, especially when some "programmer" or "engineer" with tunnel vision decides to run them together. One can only assume people do this out of laziness, incompetence, or to protect their employment.
Now SDA and SCL are fine, because the audience should know what they are. Because most datasheets refer to the Philips (NXP) I2C standard.
I have spent the last three months ploughing through a maze of embedded code for an STM32 written by someone who didn't know how to write code properly. One intermittent bug took me about two weeks to find. If the author he had written the code to be readable, I would have nailed in under two hours. It is a nightmare with many thousands of lines of gobbledegook. It is barely commented throughout. The author died in August, so there is no point asking him what or why things are done in his code.
Here are some initialisms he used: iia (index in array), idx (index) - yes he mixed the abbreviations up. sn (sensor) and sno (serial number) - ambiguous nonsense. Ready for this one? P. Oh, that means pressure and I could only work that out from the datasheet. Of course there hardly any comments, and poor and illogical code structure... it all needs to be to be rewritten.
The bottom line: You are writing code and creating a schematic primarily for other humans to read, not decode. Second to that, the code should work.
ANDDNTOVRUSEABRVS_whenHumanReadibleWordsAreSoMuchBetterEvenIn_camelCase.
PlainName:
--- Quote ---Datasheets generally appropriately use acronyms and initialisms if they are from a reputable company
--- End quote ---
Off-hand I can't recall a reputable datasheet using initialisms. Can you think of an example to illustrate? I may have led a sheltered life, but initialisms just don't strike me as something proper sources would use.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version