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>So, an app is a thing. It’s not an arbitrary term; it’s a stand alone program that runs on a device.

"App" is an arbitrary term, the word you are looking for is application.

>Maybe we don’t need to invent new ways to describe things that already exist…?

I agree. Can we also stop saying "AI" to refer to algorithms and macros which referred to applications?



https://www.apple.com/au/apps/

There is a common usage for these terms, they are not arbitrarily.

Describing websites purely on a “static vs dynamic” or “online vs offline” is arbitrary.

That is simply assigning subjective values to the way you interpret a website as behaving and then categorising all websites by that subjective set of metrics.

That’s what arbitrary means.

How do I measure how “dynamic” a website is? Gut feel? It’s a meaningless metric.

How “offline” is my website? Is it a bit offline? Certainty I know when it’s entirely off line… but on a scale of 0-10, how “offline” is a website that runs off an api vs one that fetches static json data files?

Wouldn’t you say that categorising websites by these metrics is totally arbitrary?

I certainly think it is.

This is some classic armchair theorising (look it up); first you invent some labels, then you put everything under those labels in a way that is convenient (rather than data driven) then you talk about it to support some ideas you have.




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