this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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icons are basically ideograms. floppy disks might be the etymology of the save icon, but kids will learn it means "save" the same way Chinese kids learn that 人 means "person" (a simplified rendering of the original Bone Oracle glyph, which depicted a person from the side)
as another example, you used the word "inundated" which comes from the Latin unda meaning "wave," as in waves overcoming a building. but you learned to use that word without needing the history lesson behind it.
Sure, except when they don't. Like what happened with that dev on that board in 2010.
How do play, pause, or stop icons mean anything? They were around for decades before me and I just learned that was how those actions were communicated.
Likely in the way that the previous commenter described. They're not wrong, it just wasn't a question of how. It was more that sometimes the transmission of information fails.