[Lazarus] Cycle vs. Circle errors

Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk
Wed Jan 4 10:09:20 CET 2012


Howard Page-Clark wrote:
> On 03/1/12 5:43, Mattias Gaertner wrote:
> 
>> The term "circle" was translated from German graph theory, but the
>> common words in English graph theory are "cycle" and "cyclic".
> 
> I'm not familiar with graph theory and the possibly specialist technical 
> meanings given there to words in common use.
> 
> However, in everyday English neither of the nouns 'cycle' or 'circle' 
> has the meaning 'mutual interdependence' except perhaps as a curious 
> extension of the metaphor which works poorly if at all.
> 
> Whereas the adjective 'circular' can carry a meaning of 'interdependent' 
> or 'dependent on itself'. So a 'circular argument' is flawed in that it 
> refers to itself rather than to an independently established 
> proposition. But in English you would not normally refer to such a 
> circular argument as a 'circle' and expect people (apart perhaps from 
> graph theorists?) to appreciate immediately what you meant.
> 
> Dependency (or interdependency) is the more descriptive term, which does 
> not rely on a strained metaphor - although 'mutual dependency' is rather 
> a mouthful.

I'm sufficiently familiar with graph theory to be confident that its 
specialist terminology- edge, vertex and so on- isn't relevant when 
software usage is being discussed.

Let's just stick to industry conventions. There's plenty of precedent 
for referring to circular references (i.e. a group of modules/units 
which each import the other), and plenty of precedent for referring to a 
sequence of build operations which becomes a cycle if part of it is 
intentionally repeated.

In both cases the important thing is not so much the adjective 
(circular, cyclic) but the combination of adjective plus noun, which 
/should/ be used consistently in documentation and error messages.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]




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