When I was working in the software industry, the term “fully-qualified” entered my world in a marvelously exact way.
The specific programmatic terminology here is from the Java programming language. Don’t let it bother you – some things are just details.
Java uses an organizing category called “classes” for unique bundles of code that define all the features, characteristics, and actions that this bundle of code needs in order to do what its name says it will do. (Other programming languages may have other terms.)
Each class has to have all the parts it needs to know when it’s wanted, what it needs to look for, what it has to do, when it has to stop, and what (if anything) should happen next.
If a class is completely and properly defined in all these parameters (and sometimes more), then it’s called a “fully-qualified” class. It can be trusted and can be used across multiple regions.
Not all classes are fully-qualified. They’re okay for quick tasks and have a place in the Java ecosystem, but their usefulness is limited. Those classes, those hunks of code, usually have to be filled out to be fully-qualified or else deleted when the time comes to prepare a program for market.
Any robust program needs an awful lot of classes of many different types. It’s inefficient to have too many similar classes — you’ve got to have different classes to do different tasks. All that they have to have in common (besides logical coherence) is that they must be properly constructed so they can do their task — whatever their particular task is.
This diversity of classes is essential to good programming.
You’re starting to see the metaphor here, aren’t you…
Some people view all others as fully-qualified human beings.
Some people do not. Only a few meet their idea of fully-qualified — that is, complete and correct and fully able to function as they should. This, naturally, means that they have specific and limited ideas of what humans need to do.
When people beat on those who diverge from their idea of truly human (those targets are usually women or gender-bending or people with disabilities or people of color or poor people) they’re acting on the fact that they don’t see these other people as fully-qualified human beings.
The people doing the beating-on are hung up on the feeling that these people are not properly “written”, that they’re missing huge hunks of “code” that limits their function — and makes them fair game for being taken out, sidelined or deleted.
We aren’t all the same, and nor should we be. It’d be a terrible program if we were, and would quickly choke on its own redundancy, crashing itself and possibly blue-screening the whole show.
Maybe we should go back to the old CRT colors and make it orange-screening.
What do you think? Too bold?