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

2 pointsby felixrover 4 years ago
Quite a few projects describe their software as powerful. eg. a powerful editor, a powerful type checker, powerful platform,...<p>My impression is they just want to say its is great in some way, but I don&#x27;t think powerful is the right adjective. Quite often it should be replaced by versatile, customizable, comprehensive, ...<p>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 &#x2F;` is quite powerful, but is this what software projects want to convey when using powerful to describe themselves?

1 comment

ubermanover 4 years ago
<i>&quot;it will have a lot of impact even if I put minimal energy into&quot;</i><p>It seems reasonable to me that someone claiming to have a power editor might mean that.<p>It also see a little odd to try to produce a counter example to software potentially being powerful using software.