Hello everyone :DD little question: would you understand it if I used the word 'informing' to say 'programming' ? What would be your reaction ? and 'informing computers' when out of context

informing could be a database write too.

Boring but honest answer: very confused. I could see it working if "informing" consisted of adding declarative facts to some AI or other goal-driven system that lets it figure out procedures on its own. But trying to make "inform" mean anything other than supplying declarative knowledge is always going to be a stretch at best, likely a constant source of confusion. The payoff would have to be really big.

oh, that's too bad because etymologically it fits superbly but yeah that's what I wondered. I guess that in french, synonyms to "informer" are more often used. With "renseigner" closer to 'supplying information' and "informer" slightly closer to 'picturing in one's mind'. Also, 'computer science' translates to "informatique". (in french it breaks a bit as 'informing', as in 'the act of programming', would become "information", which means 'data')

Interesting. Of course in English we do have "information technology", but that's much more about installing and running programs than writing them. What's the French term for information theory, in the sense of entropy, signal/noise ratio, etc?

My trick to find that is to go to the wiki page for, say, information theory, then I can see how other languages call it it's still 'théorie de l'information' ! Which can be kinda confusing Sometimes there is huge differences in wikipedia pages across different languages, it's wild to think about

Side comment: Wikidata is often more useful than Wikipedia for translations of technical terms. See e.g. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q131222

oh ! thanks ☺️

Coincidentally, I've been thinking about the terminology surrounding "information" recently. By its very definition, the purpose of information is to inform. In turn, "informing" means "shaping one's mind", or (circularly) producing and sharing information. A program is nothing more than an information network (a collection of related values, as defined by operations, functions, and/or relations). Therefore, producing and sharing a program with a computer is arguably equivalent to "informing" it.