No, that's EXACTLY what people are arguing about. You say "A is ten times smaller than B" when B is already understood to be small compared to something else. The implication in that sentence is that B is already known for its smallness, and A is even smaller. Except, people use that same construction even when B isn't considered small. They use that incorrect connotation when what they're really trying to say is, "B is big, but A is only a tenth as big."

So what you're saying is, "B is already small, and A is even smaller."

Right?

Are you presuming that someone already understands B to be considered small? What is B small compared to?

Math doesn't help in the absence of context. If Product A is $2 cheaper than Product B, but Product B costs $10,000 ... does it really matter? That's a little different than Product B costing $3, right? Right. In real life, context actually matters, or you're just wasting people's time.

Yes, there IS confusion. Are we supposed to infer that the thing that the new 10-times-smaller version is being compared to was already considered small? That's what implied, but nobody knows for sure because the person saying it is lazily using a common, and poorly thought out, construction that doesn't actually tell us that.

OK. But let's say you don't know how big the Small Magellanic Cloud is, relative to, say, the Milky Way, or Andromeda, or anything else. And then someone says, "We've just found a new galaxy, hiding behind a dust cloud, and it's three times smaller than the Magellanic Cloud." What are you supposed to gather from that use?

No, I don't like people conveying information in a way that forces you to go research something they mentioned without providing any useful context. When somebody cites a comparative size, but doesn't explain why (or if) that comparison is meaningful, then it's a waste of time. Especially when the communication is theoretically about science and/or technology.

You're missing the point.

When someone says, "The new battery is ten times smaller than the old battery," yes ... we can guess that part of what's meant is, "The new battery is a tenth the size of the old battery."

But there's a reason those are TWO DIFFERENT SENTENCES.

When you use the word smallER in that context, you're communicating that the old battery is small, and the new battery is even smaller. Why? Because you're saying that the new battery has time times the smallness of the old one. That has a completely different connotation than a sentence that suggests that the old battery was what it was (or was large), and the new battery is comparatively small.

The reason we have lots of vocabulary words, adjectives, and constructions is so that we can be nuanced and more precise in simple communication. When you use a sentence that essentially forces the audience to go find out what you actually meant by "ten times smaller" (was the old one small, or huge?) then you've done the opposite of providing useful information. All of that in order to avoid using slightly different words that we also all know?

This is pure laziness, that's all. It's mimicking a sound or phrase without thinking about what's actually being communicated. It's no different than people who say, "I could care less," when they mean exactly the opposite. They are uttering sounds without thinking about the actual words they're using. One small, lazy spoken step for man, part of one cumulative giant leap towards dumbing everybody down.

you wouldn't steal a policeman's hat!

Well, not before coming across Netflix's Jeeves and Wooster videos. Now I'm not so sure.

Whoa there. You wouldn't steel a car, would you???

Beim dritten Mal ist ein Charme!

And at least a few of them genuinely believe in the magical thinking, while most are just there from social peer pressure. But it's still a dire problem.

Damn, lots of Stasi victims are still of working age even. You'd hope the Germans had developed more antibodies against this crap.

Given the nice, modular nature of LLVM, I would think even the GCC developers would find it to be a more enjoyable best to work on.

Any idea why most GCC developers don't simply port their front-ends / back-ends of choice to LLVM, and walk away from GCC?

I know there's the licensing issue, which I assume matters to some heavy-duty OSS advocates. But in my experience most programmers who work with OSS aren't super passionate about GPL vs. Berkeley -style licensing.

Thousands of them, trained by some very serious, very passionate people who don't even begin to fit the cartoon caricature description of cops who fake drug busts

How many is a "number," relative to the all day, every day work these dogs and their handlers do?

The only thing search/detection dog is addicted to is the simple pleasure of working. They're descended from wolves, who live to hunt. They're bred to be incredibly sensitive, nose-wise, and have had their pack instincts morphed into a very gratifying (for them, and their handlers) pleasure in their essentially symbiotic relationship with humans. They love to go out and do stuff, and are raised as pups to get some good clean joy out of accurately differentiating between being right and wrong with their noses. They're addicted to being part of a well organized pack, just like many social animals. Addicted to the drugs or other materials they've learned to identify by the parts-per-billion in the air? Nonsense. They want a pat on the head, their favorite toy as a reward, and a chance to go do it again.