Nearly-exact is definitely not exact. To my ear 'heterodox' connotes difference and pluralism while 'unorthodox' is more of a negation. (Of course other mileages may vary.) But different words always exist for a reason—if they didn't, one would have fallen out of use. Pretentiousness is not enough to keep a word alive!
I wonder if you can offer a pair of online dictionary definitions that illustrates what you see as the difference in meaning between the two words. (I bet you can't)
Look closely enough and you'll see that they all do. One meaning for 'heterodox' is 'holding unorthodox opinions'. That's an attribute of the person, not the opinion.
The royal road to clarifying subtle differences in language, however, is etymology, and there the difference is plain. Hetero = different, dox = opinion, ortho = correct. So the distinction here is something like "diverse opinion" vs. "incorrect opinion", which to me seems clearly meaningful.
> The royal road to clarifying subtle differences in language, however, is etymology
No, it's not. Etymology tells you where a word came from, not what it means (either in denotation or connotation) in current usage. It will often be completely misleading in trying to unpack subtle differences in meaning.
There is definitely a difference in meaning, maybe just in specialized fields like theology and economics.
An Austrian school economist, or an Arianist in the early Christian church, would be called "heterodox" but probably not "unorthodox". It has the connotation of following a definite tradition that is not the main tradition in the field. "Unorthodox" means something more like "doing your own thing", so Steven Levitt (the Freakonomics guy) might be called an "unorthodox economist" because he studies unusual topics like drug dealers, but not a "heterodox economist" because he studies these strange topics using mainstream theories.
I think "heterodox" fits reasonably well in this article, it suggests that these engineers are following a distinct tradition, not just "doing their own thing".
The word aside, he's not wrong. That article is filled with flowery non-sense, making long prosaic paragraphs from thin-air. I like reading long articles, but this doesn't contribute much.
Quite possibly! But a bad article can contain a good word. I wanted to stand up for 'heterodox', first because words are my friends and I like my friends, and second because HN is a textual place and good English is part of the business here.
When given the choice of a naming a variable notSomethingDescriptive or somethingElseDescriptive, I always choose the positive name, because it's easier to understand in logical expressions, and reduces double negation. It's better to describe what something is, instead of what it's not. So unOrthoDox is more negative (and more complex) than heteroDox, because it begins with the prefix "un".
You're right, but on the other hand, it's probably not best to use words that few are familiar with if you are trying to make yourself understood. On the gripping hand, a variable name is just a variable name and its true meaning doesn't really depend on its name at all, so okay, go for the burn. (especially if you're writing Java code)
