You shouldn't use a word that can carry a precise mathematical meaning in a sentence that literally uses mathematical notation in order to speak precisely and then expect readers not to interpret the word in the precise mathematical way.
You should if you expect your readers to be normal humans who understand obvious context, and not pedantic HN readers who understand obvious context but delight in nit-picking it anyway.
Who the fuck do you think is the intended audience for an article about an algorithm in `git bundle create`? I spent approximately two minutes of my life trying to figure out where the O(n^2) algorithm was being invoked in such a way that it influenced an exponential.
Exponential was bolded in the same sentence as a big-O. 50/50 troll/author oversight.
Algorithmic? Big-O? Polynomially? Linear improvement? O(n^2) to O(n)? Or if you want to be less mathematically precise: enormous improvement?
Using exponential in this way in any context is a faux pas, because it's highly ambiguous, and requires context for clarification. But in this situation the context clearly resolved to the mathematically accurate definition, except it was used in the other way.
Quadratically doesn't have the same punch because it is actually exponentially less than exponentially. So doing it for extra punch (as opposed to not knowing the correct word) in a technical context would just be lying. It'd be like a paper saying they had a result with p less than one in a trillion for "extra punch" when they actually had p=0.1.
If you just mean "a lot" in a non-technical sense, there are plenty of words available. enormously. immensely. tremendously. remarkably. incredibly. vastly.
I understood every word, phrase, and sentence you wrote. But I did not understand your point. Still, I got the meaning of your words, so presumably you're satisfied.
