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Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

lr0.org

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Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

#21

Post by lr0 »

jameshart wrote: post #15

> naming things after random nouns, mythological creatures, or random favorite fictional characters is somehow acceptable professional practice. This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field. Really? Have you specced a microprocessor lately? Seen what pharmaceuticals are called? How polymer compound materials get named?

The "Raptor Lake" codename in microprocessors is internal, the product ships with systematic designation. Engineers spec chips by model numbers that encode generation, tier, and performance class.

In Pharmaceuticals, Doctors prescribe "sildenafil," not "Viagra." The generic name describes chemical structure. Brand names are marketing for consumers, not professional nomenclature.

Mythology in chemistry/astronomy has centuries of legacy and connects to human cultural history. Calling an element "Titanium" after Titans carries weight. Calling a SQL replicator "Marmot" connects to... what, exactly? A weekend at the zoo?

Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

#22

Post by hyperpape »

lr0 wrote: post #11
the__alchemist wrote: post #7

If the community followed the author's guidance, we would have names like "Generic LLM wrapper 690" ("GLW690" if following the early programming language conventions.) or "Github clone with a different ideology 11"

Not at all. You don't name by category, you can name by function or approach. PostgreSQL isn't "Generic SQL Database 47" it's the successor to Ingres (Post-Ingres-SQL). If your "LLM wrapper" does nothing distinctive worth naming, maybe don't publish it. But if it specifically handles streaming, call it something like "llm-stream-client." If it focuses on prompt templating, "prompt-template-engine." The name encodes t…

> PostgreSQL isn't "Generic SQL Database 47" it's the successor to Ingres (Post-Ingres-SQL).

Indeed. This helps me know that I'm using a database more modern than Ingres. I chose not to use Oracle or SQL Server because they might have predated Ingres.

Just one question: what's Ingres, and why do I care about it? Of course, I don't, which makes Postgres no more useful of a name than "fluffnutz" or "hooxup". That said, over time, I've come to like the name Postgres.

Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

#23

Post by gipp »

lr0 wrote: post #11
the__alchemist wrote: post #7

If the community followed the author's guidance, we would have names like "Generic LLM wrapper 690" ("GLW690" if following the early programming language conventions.) or "Github clone with a different ideology 11"

Not at all. You don't name by category, you can name by function or approach. PostgreSQL isn't "Generic SQL Database 47" it's the successor to Ingres (Post-Ingres-SQL). If your "LLM wrapper" does nothing distinctive worth naming, maybe don't publish it. But if it specifically handles streaming, call it something like "llm-stream-client." If it focuses on prompt templating, "prompt-template-engine." The name encodes t…

Sure, but how many LLM streaming clients are out there?

Namespacing, sure. But is "We use gh:someguy/openai/llm-streaming-client to talk to the backend" (x50 similarly cumbersome names in any architecture discussion) really better than "We use Pegasus as our LLM streaming client"?

Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

#24

Post by fusslo »

are you guys naming your products?

We have an internal name and our product name. Internal names start as something that describes the project/repo/tool. Then within 18 months the name no longer makes sense so we rename it to some random name - state names, lake names, presidents, mountains, etc. It's just a placeholder.

The public facing product name is a compromise of marketing, trademark, and what gets approved by the CEO. Even the company name might change in startup world. No joke: the startup next door had to change their name because it was too masculine, and they realized more than half their projected market was women.

Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

#25

Post by nemomarx »

lr0 wrote: post #21
jameshart wrote: post #15

> naming things after random nouns, mythological creatures, or random favorite fictional characters is somehow acceptable professional practice. This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field. Really? Have you specced a microprocessor lately? Seen what pharmaceuticals are called? How polymer compound materials get named?

The "Raptor Lake" codename in microprocessors is internal, the product ships with systematic designation. Engineers spec chips by model numbers that encode generation, tier, and performance class. In Pharmaceuticals, Doctors prescribe "sildenafil," not "Viagra." The generic name describes chemical structure. Brand names are marketing for consumers, not professional nomenclature. Mythology in chemistry/astronomy has c…

But the names we're talking about are the ones used to market software to users? I don't see how the same logic doesn't apply

Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

#27

Post by collinmcnulty »

The problem with descriptive names is that they start descriptive but then become proper nouns. At a former employer in the Fortune 100 outside the software industry, everything started with a descriptive name, that then became an acronym. And as every project and tool inevitably developed its own idiosyncrasies, the descriptive name pretty soon didn't tell you anything useful about the project at all.

It is an unavoidable reality that knowing something's name gives you very, very little information about what that something is. That's what sentences are for.

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