apply
People say apply when they want to put something to use or submit a request. You apply for a job, apply sunscreen, or apply a rule to a situation. It means taking something and making it active or relevant.
What a model may hear
- higher-order function functional programming
- treat the word as a function that calls another function with arguments packed into a list or array
- matrix or array operation linear algebra, data science
- broadcast a function across rows, columns, or elements of a data structure
- configuration or patch infrastructure as code, Kubernetes
- execute a manifest, deploy a resource, or reconcile desired state against a cluster
- function method on objects JavaScript, Python
- invoke a callable with a specific this value or bound context
Where people and models part ways
“Apply this to the whole team”
Meant: Use this policy for everyone on the team
May be taken as: Broadcast an operation across an array of team member objects or run a deployment named team
Say instead: “Use this policy for everyone on the team”
“Apply the discount”
Meant: Give the customer the lower price
May be taken as: Execute a function called discount with unexpected arguments or scope
Say instead: “Give the customer the lower price”
“Apply what you just said”
Meant: Use that previous explanation now
May be taken as: Re-invoke the last function call or re-run the last code block
Say instead: “Use your previous explanation in this new situation”
Tips
- Say use instead of apply when you mean employ or put into practice
- Name the specific action: say calculate, send, or update instead of apply
- Say run or execute only if you want code to run
- Avoid apply followed by a list or array, which sounds like functional programming
- Say for everyone or to each person to avoid sounding like array broadcasting
Often confused with
- map
- transform each element and return results
- call
- invoke directly with fixed arguments
- invoke
- run by name with standard binding
- deploy
- send code to run on infrastructure
- implement
- build out the details of a plan