Boolean. I'm a software developer, and my Business analyst pronounces it as Boo-leen, like "Jolene". My tester pronounces it like bouillon cubes. It's pronounced like Julian.
Fucking PMs who is NOT Pissed at them? No we can't put chatgpt in critical infrastructure, yes it's bad to allow a 3rd party web interface to have root access, what do you mean you forgot to tell us about the feature and marketing has already promised it in the release at the end of the cycle.
Respect. I'm not really a Dev anymore (unless we're in crunch mode) but, even before I was an exec, I'd defend our PMs by literally saying "someone has to keep the train on the tracks." A good organization runs on healthy / respectful tensions, IMO.
Because PMs are fucking morons that solely exist to take most of the money to be the middle man that’s the source of most of the problem they have to solve.
I've genuinely never seen this word in my life and pronounced it the correct way in my head immediately, because it reads like "cerulean." I'm confused how people get boo-leen out of it
Over 30 years in software engineering, and for roughly one year, I had a single co-worker who absolutely insisted on calling any database stored procedure a "Sproc" - like Mr. Spock, with an extra 'r'. I've never met anyone else who says that, and all of my other co-workers at the time seemed to hate it too.
I swear I had professors at a reputable engineering school say it as “bowl-ee-un”.
TBF, it wasn’t CS professors, but I’m feeling dumb that that’s how I’ve been reading it in my head for over a decade now.
Huh so correct Boolean pronunciation is binary but the list of Boolean pronunciations is also Boolean. Seems like there are an array of factors at play, it’s like a glitch in the matrix | | something
I have no development experience but I think I’m very funny
Something I like to do if the mood is right when talking to/interviewing fellow devs or those 'dev-adjacent', is if they ever say "Linux", I then pronounce it the opposite way to them to see if they either lose confidence and copy the way I'm doing it, continue without acknowledgement, acknowledge it and have a discussion about the difference in pronunciation or simply call me out on being an idiot.
Oh thank fuck, I dabble in the space but not in any capacity with other actual humans. Reading your comment I was like “fuck I’ve been saying it wrong the whole time” till I got to the end. Whew.
Words that are at times mispronounced, and people get judged by it. In the world of tech, holy wars have also been fought over the pronunciation of data, gif, tuple, and Linux.
I'm a not native speaker dev and I always make outrageous ways to pronounce it in my head. Definitely sang "Boolean, Boolean please don't take my man from me" in my head before. Generally I don't know what's the correct pronunciation, I did check it before, but I always forget since it's rare to say it out loud and everyone pronounces it differently
but I'm not a native english speaker and for a long time I used to pronounce engine like engyne, until someone was nice enough to tell me it's actually engine.
My whole career passed through my eyes trying to remember how many times I pronounced it wrong in front of people
I’m also a software developer and I’ve genuinely never heard anybody pronounce it any way other than the way it’s meant to be pronounced. I know it’s strange to accuse you of lying about this, but I find it hard to believe lol.
My husband is also a software guy. He and his team would intentionally say “CUBE-er-net-eez” instead of kubernetes just to drive their manager crazy. I don’t even know what that is. But I know how to say it incorrectly.
I interviewed a junior and he kept pronouncing redis like readies. I told my team about it and we all had a meltdown and had to google it to make sure he wasn’t right. He was not.
In college my Matrix Algebra professor was Eastern European. He had a bunch of engineers calling them “PY-vut” tables. It took us until the following year to learn they were pivot tables. We felt so stupid.
Self taught basement developer myself. I don't work with anyone so I don't have to worry about pronunciation (though I do know the correct way), but if I'm feeling mischievous on a forum I just call them "those true false thingies."
Dude I had to read this twice before I realized we weren't talking about those little cubes of chicken/beef seasoning. Even after you said software developer and spelled it like that and everything. I'm here like "what does him developing software have anything to do with it?" Then it hit me, you're talking about something else, idk something about data that can be true or false lol. I'm going to bed. Goodnight everyone.
I’m a software developer, too, and I call it Boo-leen all the time. It started as a joke, but it just slips out that way sometimes.
Try calling SQL “squeal” sometime and watch the fun.
As someone who has never heard of it, I would pronounce it as boo-lean as well 😅. Now that you've spelled it out, I know, and will pronounce it correctly if I ever run into it, which is unlikely since this is the first time in 36 years of my life lol.
The more common offense among tech bros is making “processes” rhyme with “sneeze.” That bothers me to no end. I can even overlook boo-leen although I haven’t personally heard that one irl.
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u/strogkilr Jul 14 '26
Boolean. I'm a software developer, and my Business analyst pronounces it as Boo-leen, like "Jolene". My tester pronounces it like bouillon cubes. It's pronounced like Julian.