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yetanotherjoshtoday at 3:30 PM1 replyview on HN

The real problem is not terms like "load-bearing," which communicate clearly enough. It's the constant invention of cryptic shorthand terms and phrases that have no referent, and end up acting like a puzzle to be decoded. This is often paired with hyphenation, but not always:

"The current behavior paper" -> The behavior in the running system that was previously described as papered over.

"Marker transport over-claim" -> The inaccurate review finding on the object's sentinel flag in the API response.

I suppose the cryptic/invented language problem is about token efficiency? But this sort of token efficiency is extremely difficult to deal with when it comes to conversation with a human about complex system. It might be efficient inside reasoning blocks, but when the model generates the final turn text, it should avoid this, as it's brutally inefficient due to the time spent wondering what each uniquely coined phrase means and having to ask for constant clarifications, which then you have to wait for another turn, eating up time and context while it burns more xhigh reasoning just thinking about how to explain its own awful language.


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ianmurraystoday at 4:41 PM

I have this exact problem with 4.8 and Fable. Sometimes I can barely understand what it’s saying. I’m no english first-language speaker, but I don’t consider myself bad at English either, and it’s gotten increasingly hard to understand Claude’s claims and explanations.

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