Careful, you might have been talking to a Real Engineer. Perhaps even a structural variant that use this phrase pretty much daily.
replyWe weren't talking about "seeing a man about a horse barn" we were talking about software.
replyLet's double-click on that. It's important to keep top of mind that using disruptive words and patterns in conversation isn't always driven by LLMs — reasoning from first principles tells us that problematic usages like this existed beforehand. One of my load-bearing career learnings is that people used this shape of language as a shibboleth long before game-changing tools like ChatGPT started slopping so much of what people read. It's a performant way of categorizing people into a very specific tech culture in-group based on vibes.
replyI don't think it's performative or about vibes. Everyone subconsciously adopts phrases and in general ways of talking from people around them. May it be from friends, neighbors or coworkers.
replyI use load-bearing all the time, mostly in jokes about something
replyThis highly depends on the context of the conversation. Were you by any chance talking about walls?
replyyeah? it’s not that weird of a term
replyIt’s weird when someone starts using terminology that is heavily over-indexed by LLMs out of the blue.
replyHuh, I've heard this term all the time at work and used it myself since long before LLMs
replyThen it's not weird because it's not out of the blue.
replySame
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