Yes, lawyers do tend to have a part to play in writing things that present a legally binding commitment being made by an organisation. Developers really can’t throw stones from their glass houses here. How many of you have a pre-canned spiel explaining why the complexities of whichever codebase you spend your days on are ACTUALLY necessary, and are certainly NOT the result of over-engineering? Thought so.
> How many of you have a pre-canned spiel explaining why the complexities of whichever codebase you spend your days on are ACTUALLY necessary, and are certainly NOT the result of over-engineering? Thought so.
Hm, now you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen this specific example.
Not that we don't have jargon that's bordering on cant, leading to our words being easily mis-comprehended by outsiders: https://i.imgur.com/SL88Z6g.jpeg
Canned cliches are also the only thing I get whenever I try to find out why anyone likes the VIPER design pattern — and that's despite being totally convinced that (one of) the people I was talking to, had genuinely and sincerely considered my confusion and had actually experimented with a different approach to see if my point was valid.
Sure lawyers wrote it but I'd bet a lot there's a product or business person standing behind the lawyer saying - "we want to do this but don't be so obvious about it because we don't want to scare users away". And so lawyers would love to be very upfront about what is happening because that's the best way to avoid liability. However, that conflicts with what the business wants, and because the lawyer will still refuse to write anything that's patently inaccurate, you end up with a weasel word salad that is ambiguous and unhelpful.
