0

Can we say "It is lagging hard" when some software doesn't work well at all?

I know other synonyms like: "It's glitchy" "It's buggy"

Ilya Kushlianski
  • 111
  • 2
    Properly running software can lag (i.e. respond slowly) which is not the same as being glitchy or buggy. – KillingTime Oct 21 '22 at 08:48
  • No you can't say (or write) It is lagging hard. You need an adverb there, not an adjective. But don't use hardly! You could replace hard with badly perhaps. Or you could write It is very laggy (which will upset the language purists, but this is software we're talking about and, hey, the language has to evolve). – High Performance Mark Oct 21 '22 at 08:53
  • "Buggy" doesn't mean "not working well." Software might be bug-free, but inefficient. If software "isn't working well" that's all we know: no detail. – Weather Vane Oct 21 '22 at 10:18
  • 1
    @HighPerformanceMark what do you make of this example from the OED? "1986 R. H. Coombs et al. Inside Doctoring i. ii. 134 I figured it was just mild phrenic nerve stretching caused by really expanding my lungs..as I was running hard."** or The wind was blowing hard." – Greybeard Oct 21 '22 at 11:08
  • 1
    Yes, you can say "lagging hard"; it is correct use. – Greybeard Oct 21 '22 at 11:09
  • 3
    I don't care what the OED says about running I simply won't allow lagging hard. And you are welcome to disagree! – High Performance Mark Oct 21 '22 at 11:12
  • 1
    The phrase “it’s lagging hard” is completely fine and I’m sure you can find 1000s of usages of it among, e.g. the gamer community. But as KillingTime says it’s not the same as “glitchy” or “buggy”. Software which produces the wrong result, or crashes, or accidentally removes all the control rods from the reactor core aren’t “lagging” (“hard” or not). You can only say “lagging hard” when the software is lagging.. and hard to boot. This isn’t exclusive to networked apps (lag can certainly be caused by e.g. disk thrashing), but it’s most commonly applied in that context. – Dan Bron Oct 21 '22 at 11:31
  • In the ordinary sense of lagging (moving slowly and falling behind others), hard doesn't make sense, because the laggard is by definition not running hard! – Kate Bunting Oct 21 '22 at 11:49
  • @KateBunting "Hard" can mean "severe" so it's fine to use it with laggs. – Skobo Do Oct 21 '22 at 11:52
  • Lagging hard is a perfect poetic description of failing software. – John Lawler Oct 21 '22 at 14:48
  • You can say it, but I likely wouldn't understand what you mean. But, of course, I'm just a lowly Master of Electrical Engineering with only about 50 years of experience with computers. – Hot Licks Oct 21 '22 at 19:15
  • "lagging hard" has been used since at least the mid-90s, so...25 years now, but "no" is doesn't mean buggy. It just means the network connection quality is chaotic. – Yorik Oct 21 '22 at 20:52
  • It's glitchy, It's buggy, It's laggy - all fine. It's glitching hard, It's bugging hard, It's lagging hard - all *nonsense. For emphatic versions, It's very glitchy, It's terribly buggy, It's awful laggy* would all be unexceptional to native speakers in conversational contexts. – FumbleFingers Oct 22 '22 at 16:29

1 Answers1

3

"To lag" doesn't mean "not working well", but "needing unusually big amounts of time between request and answer".

For instance, in networking the "lag" is the time needed for a packet to travel from its originator to the addressee. If the network would "not work well" (is glitchy or buggy) there would be dropped packets (they won't reach the addressee at all) or corrupted packets or similar things, but if there is a lot of "lag", then the networks works fine - just slowly so.

"To lag hard" is a term I never heard in my nearly 40 years in IT. More common is "to lag (very) much" or "to lag a lot", also "there is a lot of lag" or "the lag is big".

bakunin
  • 426