Ian Piumarta ian.piumarta@inria.fr wrote that: [performant i]s a perfectly good french adjective, and means precisely... > "[something] performs well, has good performance" and is therefore > "performant". ...that. If it isn't part of English, it should be. (Who do we petition? L'Académie anglaise ?? ;-) I like to count syllables. I note that "more performant" is four syllables, "faster" is two. The problem is that "performs well, has good performance" is seriously ambiguous. For cars, for example, we can say unambiguously: X accelerates faster than Y. X uses less fuel than Y. X is quieter than Y. X uses less oil than Y. X has more leg-room than Y. X emits fewer particles than Y. X costs less than Y to buy. X costs less than Y to run. X smells nicer than Y. X pulls more birds than Y. (Sorry about the dated idiom.) ... But what does 'performs better' mean?
With respect to computer software, X is faster than Y. X is faster than Y for large problems. X uses less memory than Y. X is more accurate than Y. X passes more tests than Y. X is cheaper than Y. ... are all aspects of performance. If someone tells me 'X is more performant than Y', then even with the French dictionary in front of me I know nothing more than this: the speaker approves of X. I do not know *why*.
In computing discussions, let us prefer *specific* terms to words and phrases like "performant" and "performs well".
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