Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
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Question: My programming peers suggest to use the term count with discrete things: count of words, count of sentences and so on. Then again my instructor suggest me to use the term 'number' for the discrete things in a thesis. I have used the word 'amount' but my instructor says that is only for continuous measures. Please, clarify the different usages. It may be that programming jargon misuses the words. How and when to use the words in official language? Examples about the usages with count, number and amount -- wrong or right? I have 7 liters of juice. This amount is too much to drink alone. I have 17 sparse polynomials. This count is irrelavant. (how my programming would say) I have 17 sparse polynomials. This number is irrelavant. (Used amount but guided to number).

Answer: I believe that amount should only be used for uncountable things, like 'pudding' number and count should only be used for countable things, like 'baby aardvarks' quantity can be used for either, and all of the above are measures of 'quantity'


Question: For example, we agreed with a friend to meet in a week, and the day before the meeting I want to make sure nothing has changed about the agreement. So I'd come up with something like Are we still meeting tomorrow? Is there a better (shorter) way to say/ask this?.

Answer: Your phrase is perfectly expectable. The only obvious shortening would be: Are we still on? You could shorten it further to: We still on? But at some point you aren't really gaining anything. Other alternatives: Are we still on for tomorrow? You still up for lunch tomorrow? We still good for lunch? Is tomorrow still good? And so on. Most of these, by the way, are extremely informal and are primarily heard in purely conversational English.


Question: Is there a single word to describe birds that can fly? Am I struggling to think of a word because the default notion of a bird is that it can fly? So we generally only need to differentiate the ones that can't fly. I've seen the term 'winged' in a few google searches, but to my mind an ostrich is winged, but it is also flightless. I guess I'm looking for the word you'd put into this blank: Penguins are flightless because they cannot fly. Ostriches are flightless because they cannot fly. Pigeons are ____ because they can fly.

Answer:
I think you can just use flying to describe them; flying birds sounds perfectly normal and isn't a tautology, nor does it only apply to birds in the air, cf. the title of the Wikipedia article 'Flying and gliding animals'. It's obviously an awkward choice for your example sentence, where another option, volant, could be used instead: 2: flying or capable of flying (source: Merriam-Webster)