For example, last fall I had a conversation about the term "to architect", a http://www.neatorama.com/2014/09/06/The-20-Most-Controversia... . It's from this conversation that I learned to think about terms as also having an ingroup/outgroup meaning.

The discussion concerned the idea that (building) architects don't say "We architected this" but rather "We designed this". Quoting from http://www.archdaily.com/451372/for-architects-only-how-kany... :

> When Kanye West spoke with students at my alma mater on Sunday evening, he said “I really do believe that the world can be saved through design, and everything needs to actually be ‘architected.’” In the social media frenzy that followed, a recurring response that I saw on architecture-centric sites was to snicker at West’s use of the word “architect” as a verb. For many, this was symbolic of West’s ignorance and hubris as he presumed to talk about something without knowing anything.

As that article points out, as well as the pointers I gave in my own side of the conversation, architects do say "to architect", and have done for many decades.

We of course have many terms that make it possible to distinguish between a good programmer and a non-programmer. A short list includes "closure", "garbage collection", and "mock object". These are specialist terms that convey a meaning not captured by standard English terms. While barriers to the field, they are essential barriers because the underlying concepts are meaningful.

But "grok", while it is supposed to have a meaning somehow different or deeper than "fully understand", is not actually used that way and is not an essential specialist term for the field.

This makes grok (and other words like 'frob') a meaningless barrier to entry. As I mostly work to get non-programmers (in my case, chemists) to do more programming, this makes it a barrier I dislike.