One convention I've found useful is to define any acronym, or even any word or phrase that's used in a nonstandard way, the first time it's used in a conversation. Additionally, acronyms frequently pick up additional meanings than those you get from the individual words that comprise them, so you probably should not just expand the acronym the first time you use it. Consider the acronym "DDL", as in "Data Definition Language". If you're not familiar with the term, you will be equally lost whether someone says "The prod DB is down because the third DDL migration of the release hung" or "The production database is down because the third Data Definition Language migration of the release hung". If you instead say "The prod DB is down because the third DDL migration (DDL migrations = schema changes like adding or removing columns or tables)", everyone who's worked with a database before knows what happened even if they don't necesssarily know exactly what DDL stands for.
Acronyms are nice when you've got a long, frequently used phrase, as long as everyone in the conversation knows what they mean. I think banning acronyms entirely would be eliminating all of the useful value from the practice of using acronyms, while not necessarily addressing the largest problem that the use of acronyms causes.
Acronyms are nice when you've got a long, frequently used phrase, as long as everyone in the conversation knows what they mean. I think banning acronyms entirely would be eliminating all of the useful value from the practice of using acronyms, while not necessarily addressing the largest problem that the use of acronyms causes.
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