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0 pointshnlmorg1mo ago0 comments

In fairness to the authors README, there isn't really any other BPFs in this domain and if someone didn't already know what BPF was, then this project wouldn't be of any interest to them (and would be a bad place to start on an BPF journey too).

So I can't blame the project's author for the lack of explanation about what BPF is. Particularly when it's just someone's personal project.

And before anyone complains about this comment: I do think the GP is completely fair in asking for clarification as to what BPF is too. There sometimes seems to be backlash on HN against people asking for a term to be explained. This comment isn't that.

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auxiliarymoose1mo ago· 2 in thread

Sure, but if you are sharing with a general audience (where people aren't necessarily coming from your own domain) it's a good idea to make the writing accessible.

My first thought would have been Band-Pass Filter, which is also a filter potentially related to computer systems.

I work in an industry with a lot of Three-Letter Acronyms (TLAs) and eXtended Three-Letter Acronyms (XTLAs) (sometimes known as Four-Letter Acronyms (FLAs)), and there they are often overloaded in their meanings. So in my experience, being clear about the definition is helpful to readers so they can immediately understand the document without having to triangulate meanings from the rest of the document.

hnlmorgOP1mo ago

But again, this isn't intended for a general audience.

Anyone who might need this would already know what BPF is. And anyone who isn't familiar with the term BPF in this context wouldn't be the target audience for this.

It's also worth noting that BPF isn't ever referred to in it's non-acronym form. Literally no-one in the field calls this "Berkeley Packet Filter". Just like nobody calls PHP "PHP: Hypertext Processor" (or whatever backronym they've decided on this week), nor SQL as Structured Query Language. The name for this technically literally is just referred to as "BPF".

So while I agree with your point in general -- it's not really a fair complaint in this specific occurrence.

auxiliarymoose1mo ago

Well, it's posted on Hacker News which is a general audience including people working on electrical/signal/audio/radio-frequency systems among other things (not just low-level network code) where BPF has a different meaning, so I think disambiguation is appropriate.

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