Ask HN: When is 'powerful' the right adjective for software?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25768005
by felixr • 6 years ago
2 1 6 years ago

Quite a few projects describe their software as powerful. eg. a powerful editor, a powerful type checker, powerful platform,...

My impression is they just want to say its is great in some way, but I don't think powerful is the right adjective. Quite often it should be replaced by versatile, customizable, comprehensive, ...

To me a powerful tool means it will have a lot of impact even if I put minimal energy into it. E.g. `rm -rf /` is quite powerful, but is this what software projects want to convey when using powerful to describe themselves?

Related Stories

Loading related stories...

Source preview

news.ycombinator.com