Any definitive definition?
Is it a new word? A made up word? Originally French?
Anyone ever used it in all seriousness?
What an ugly word.
I found this rather good explanation, which seems to say that performant, French in origin, is used in English context as “high performance”, usually in IT type settings.
[enterprise software designer]
Yep, it means “performs well”. I personally kinda doubt that it’s from the French, though; I suspect that some IT guys just happened to make it up.
[/enterprise software designer]
Oh, I can accept the fact that it’s a French word–it’s just that, given IT guys’ habits about making up words willy-nilly, I suspect that it’s actually a coincidence that the same word also appears in French (and has the same meaning to boot…err, I mean, “as well”).
It couldn’t possibly have been a French IT guy (or gal) perhaps working in an anglophone country?
It would appear most are as confused as me. It sounds like one of those ugly using a noun as a verb words.
Whatever is wrong with just “optimal”?
Beats hell outta me.
“Optimal” implies a single value at the high end of the scale (which, given the number of variables in a system, is a constantly-moving target and therefore isn’t really measurable as such). “Performant” implies anywhere within the “good” range of the scale. If you have a service-level agreement (e.g., “the system will carry <foo> amount of traffic in <bar> seconds”), you want to define measurable numbers. The system is performant if it performs within the defined “good” range.