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# gradle

[Slackbot]

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[Zac Sweers]

"a priori" is a known phrase, seems fair game to me. If you don't know it you could just google it rather than this odd message to 4500 people concluding that all build tools have complicated docs just because you didn't know a phrase in one 🤔

[Zac Sweers]

Well, I'm not sure any of us are in a position to make informed claims about how many people know this reference, let alone "most". I can say though that English wasn't my first language and this is "plain english" to me. It also still takes 2 seconds to google it if you don't know it.

[Zac Sweers]

If looking up the occasional word is such a dealbreaker, you're going to have a bad time reading most things I imagine. Languages evolve and new turns of phrase come and go my friend, you can't expect every doc to know exactly what's in your personal vernacular and cater to that.

[Zac Sweers]

I think your energy in berating this could have been better spent googling it

[Philip S]

I completely agree that documentation should use as plain and simple English as possible. Not considering how your way of writing can be interpreted by the wider mass is how we ended up with that infamous Thermosiphon Dagger example. I see no advantage of using expressions like this when simpler alternatives that everyone will understand without having to look it up exists.

[Vampire]

While I agree with both sides here, that "a priori" is a common phrase (non-native speaker here too) and you cannot cater for every readers vocabulary, but also that using "beforehand" is just simpler and better to read, and also why one sentence disqualifies all docs of all build tools, I have a different question.

What has this complaint to do with Gradle? Why do you think it is helpful posting it here, except for letting go steam? If you don't like the Proguard docs, complain to Proguard. Even if your complaint could be considered constructive, it is not by simply targeting the wrong audience.

If you have a complaint about Gradle docs, then complain about them, not about some totally unrelated tool and then extrapolating to all build tools. And that in spite of Proguard not even being a "build tool".

[Javier]

a priori is not even an english word and it is used in multiple languages.

[Fleshgrinder]

Normal phrase in German academia (math).

[Marc Knaup]

German here that didn't have Latin in school 👋
I have no idea what "a priori" means even after almost 20 years of programming. It would be an occasions where I have to Google such a term just to forget about it an hour later because it's just irrelevant otherwise.

I agree with @Jason Ankers. No need to use Latin terms where simple English can do. Way more inclusive and doesn't make unnecessary assumptions about people.

[Javier]

I had no latin classes too, it is a general word that it is used, same for a posteriori. Indeed, probably it is already added to the dictionaries, at least in spanish it is added

[Javier]

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/a-priori?q=a+priori

[Javier]

not sure what is the main/official german dictionary tho

[Vampire]

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/a_priori

But still, it's futile to discuss who knows a specific word or doesn't know it, even if it is part of the own native language.

Especially as the documentation of a completely unrelated thing is the topic! 😉

[Marc Knaup]

How is it relevant if a word or term is listed in the dictionary?

[Javier]

Why beforehand is easier to understand than a word which exists in a lot of European languages, including English?

[Marc Knaup]

Why is it auxiliary to indite documentation so that it’s much more facile to understand by anyone?

[Javier]

You are generalizing, and that can be done with any word

[Marc Knaup]

The point is that this is about keeping documentation simple. Not about what’s listed in what dictionary. This isn’t Scrabble nor a legal document.

Avoiding Latin terms makes reading and understanding documentation easier for people who don’t know those terms for whatever reason.

“A priori” is even superfluous unnecessary in that sentence. Removing it makes the sentence easier to understand for those who don’t know the term and doesn’t really change the meaning for those who do.

[Javier]

I ask the same question, simplicity can be subjective, that latin word is used around the world, because @Zac Sweers lives in USA and he knows it too.

You are supposing that if you don’t know a word, it is not simpler, that is a generalization.

[mbonnin]

"A priori" is very common in everyday's conversation in french. Maybe that doc was written by someone whose native language wasn't english. I'm pretty sure they'd welcome the feedback.

[ursus]

in slovak as well.. a priori, de facto, de jure, et cetera..

[Ingmar Dasseville]

Hi all, I'm from Guardsquare and we're maintaining ProGuard. The documentation was indeed not written by an English native speaker, but we're very happy to accept contributions of anybody that wants to help us improve it.
You can find the source and documentation on our GitHub and we try to be quick to react to Pull requests that come our way.
If there's any ProGuard question or feedback that you can't find the right place for, feel free to ping or DM me.