fast
People say fast to mean quick or speedy. They want something done without delay. A fast car, a fast answer, a fast meal.
What a model may hear
- Facebook AI Similarity Search machine learning libraries
- assume the user wants nearest-neighbor search in high-dimensional vectors
- FASTA/FASTQ format bioinformatics
- parse genetic sequence data or expect files in that format
- FAST protocol financial trading
- expect FIX-adapted for streaming messages about market data
- fasting flag or state health apps, scheduling systems
- check whether a user is in a no-food period
- compile-time evaluation Rust, C++
- look for const or constexpr optimizations
Where people and models part ways
“Make it fast”
Meant: Return the answer quickly
May be taken as: Switch to a vector-search index or skip validation to save milliseconds
Say instead: “Return the answer in under two seconds”
“I need a fast file”
Meant: A file that transfers quickly
May be taken as: Generate a .fasta genome sequence file
Say instead: “A small file that downloads quickly”
“Run the fast test”
Meant: The quick smoke test, not the long one
May be taken as: Look for a test named FAST or skip slow test suites entirely
Say instead: “Run only the quick smoke tests”
“Go fast”
Meant: Hurry up
May be taken as: Enable unsafe optimizations or reduce precision
Say instead: “Prioritize speed over memory use”
Tips
- Say quick or speedy if you mean human time, not system time.
- Mention a domain like biology or finance if you do mean the acronym.
- Give a number: fast as in two seconds, not fast as in O(log n).
- Say end-to-end if you mean wall-clock time, not just one step.
- Add safely if you do not want corners cut.
Often confused with
- quick
- more informal, less likely to trigger technical senses
- rapid
- used in medical and scientific naming, fewer ML collisions
- swift
- also a programming language, so has its own technical load
- speedy
- almost never a technical term, safest for plain human pace
- accelerated
- strongly implies GPU or hardware offload
- hasty
- implies carelessness, no technical usage