hi, i'm jenn

So, I have grown out of using the word “like” as my filler word when I speak. Its replacement: So.

And it turns out I’m not alone – according to an article in the NY Times, my use of the word is one of the [few] ways I’m a stereotypical Software Developer

So it is widely believed that the recent ascendancy of “so” began in Silicon Valley. The journalist Michael Lewis picked it up when researching his 1999 book “The New New Thing”: “When a computer programmer answers a question,” he wrote, “he often begins with the word ‘so.’ ” Microsoft employees have long argued that the “so” boom began with them.

In the software world, it was a tic that made sense. In immigrant-filled technology firms, it democratized talk by replacing a world of possible transitions with a catchall. And “so” suggested a kind of thinking that appealed to problem-solving software types: conversation as a logical, unidirectional process — if this, then that.

So much for being unique.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 9:58 am and is filed under nerd stuff, randomness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.