Stop using big words · Clief Notes

Stop using big words

So recently I left a comment on

's live-session thread and immediately wished I'd just made it a post.

The comment:

"There's a lot of software engineers and highly educated tech people in this skool community and sometimes it's hard to follow just because I don't have that same level of training and education. Curtis, similar to Jake, brought it down to my level so I can understand it on the first pass."

I buried it under a thank-you, it deserved its own post, aquí estamos.

I'm a second-class AI citizen in this room. Not a coder. Built my company on Excel, faith, and the kind of stubbornness my wife tolerates because I bring snacks to bed at 1 AM for her and teh baby almost done growing in her tummy. This room is mostly engineers, or so it seems. I am, statistically, an extra in this movie. Or the class clown who got let in to this Harvard because brown and affirmative action. I've made peace with that. The wife is still negotiating terms as she approaches full term.

What I haven't made peace with is the vocabulary you all throw around.

I scanned recent posts and comments here and ranked the words that made my brain stop and Google. The Top 3, with the analogies I wish someone had handed me on day one:

Orchestration

11 hits and climbing in just a few pages of posts. @Curtis Hays named his "Duke." Cool, but what does Duke do, though? An orchestrator points the AI to the floor/department/folder it needs to go to, efficiently, quickly, efficiently. It also tells the different folders/specialists you've hired how to work well with each other. Translation for the rest of us: it's the map at the mall that says you are here, Cinnabon is over there, please proceed in an orderly fashion. No judgment. I love that map. I'd marry that map (sorry, mi amor).

Architecture

22+ hits. The runaway champion. Remember the mall map from #1? That only works because somebody built the mall first. That's architecture. Ari literally calls herself a Chaos-driven Media Architect, and now I get why. Her job is deciding where every room goes before anyone moves in. For the rest of us: architecture is getting really good at organizing folders, the floor plan of your house. You decide once where the bathroom is, then you stop deciding for the next thirty years. You don't tell dinner guests "my architecture puts the bathroom upstairs." You say "bathroom's upstairs, second door on the left, jiggle the handle." Same energy.

Abstraction

Lower count, much higher pain. Abstraction is the menu at a restaurant. The label that let's you forget the details. You order "the burger." You do not order "ground chuck, sesame seed bun, sixty-second sear per side, cheddar melted to liquid state at 145 degrees, served on a board because we're past plates now." The burger IS the abstraction. The kitchen handles the rest. You eat the burger. In a sense, it's anything but abstraction. It's giving meaning to something complex in a way that is, dare I use big word, synthesized and given symbolic representation. Here's what Claude told me:

"You're up to your neck in abstractions and they're saving you hours every week:

clients/amber/ is an abstraction. You say "Amber's stuff" and your AI knows where to look. You don't navigate the C drive in your head.
"Marketing Blueprint" is an abstraction. One word, fourteen sections of methodology hidden behind it. Lyndsay hears "blueprint" and knows what to do.
"Fractional CMO" is an abstraction. You hire one, you get strategy + content + ads + ICP + brand voice + vendor management + reporting. The role label hides the work."

To the software engineers in this community:

Please, talk down to us. We will not be offended. Pinky-swear on it. Spell it out like we're five because some of us act that age anyway. What feels obvious to you is the line that finally clicks for us. The remedial explanation is the bridge. The "trivial example" you almost skipped is the thing that lets the rest of us catch up to what you've been talking about for three threads now.

Shoutout to

@Ari Evergreen

on this one. Her Opus 4.8 post landed a thousand-word thesis in one sentence: "The model is the replaceable part." I read it once, walked away with something I could quote at my next leadership meeting, and emerged smarter than I went in. That's what hitting it on the first pass looks like. More of that, please. Save the mortgage-grade vocabulary for when it actually moves the work forward.

I'll keep stalking. You keep translating. We'll meet in the middle and build something cooler than either of us could alone.

P.S. If you used "deterministic" in a comment this week, no you didn't. Cool word, though. The vending machine analogy is right there if you want it.

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