Topic-specific vocabulary and technical jargon has to get finessed to be used properly. In a perfect world, you can use such words in a way that the context makes their meaning clear. Or, at the very least, gives an obvious way to research what the word means. Acronyms and abbreviations are an excellent anti-example for this—I’d never use an abbreviation unless it’s absolutely necessary, and use the full phrase nearby before it. Garbage-in garbage-out is a useful way to talk about algorithms failing by seeding them with bad input, but randomly dropping GIGO in a conversation is a quick way to lose someone.
Jargon and inferential distance are closely related, and you need to keep track of both together. People who are already thinking much like you are likely using the same words for the same concepts, and vice versa.
Also, even if you can talk specifically in technical contexts, learning to ease people into jargon and introduce lay members to engineering disciplines is a tremendously valuable skill to learn. As in a 4-year engineering degree and this skill is a quick way to get promoted to whatever position is in between management-types and engineering-types. It’s really straightforward—just have enough technical chops to not completely embarrass yourself in a technical context, and learn how to explain engineering like your audience has an MBA, and management is going to want to talk to you about engineering projects rather than other people.
tl;dr—go ahead and use technical words in technical contexts, but try to do so in a way that those unfamiliar with the context can at least figure out what questions they need to ask.
Topic-specific vocabulary and technical jargon has to get finessed to be used properly. In a perfect world, you can use such words in a way that the context makes their meaning clear. Or, at the very least, gives an obvious way to research what the word means. Acronyms and abbreviations are an excellent anti-example for this—I’d never use an abbreviation unless it’s absolutely necessary, and use the full phrase nearby before it. Garbage-in garbage-out is a useful way to talk about algorithms failing by seeding them with bad input, but randomly dropping GIGO in a conversation is a quick way to lose someone.
Jargon and inferential distance are closely related, and you need to keep track of both together. People who are already thinking much like you are likely using the same words for the same concepts, and vice versa.
Also, even if you can talk specifically in technical contexts, learning to ease people into jargon and introduce lay members to engineering disciplines is a tremendously valuable skill to learn. As in a 4-year engineering degree and this skill is a quick way to get promoted to whatever position is in between management-types and engineering-types. It’s really straightforward—just have enough technical chops to not completely embarrass yourself in a technical context, and learn how to explain engineering like your audience has an MBA, and management is going to want to talk to you about engineering projects rather than other people.
tl;dr—go ahead and use technical words in technical contexts, but try to do so in a way that those unfamiliar with the context can at least figure out what questions they need to ask.