Think twice before naming your new programming language
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Think twice before naming your new programming language
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#2I think this goes for a lot more than just programming languages. FOSS projects in general tend to pick some generic English words as names that make them really hard to find. I've even seen a few startups that've fallen into this pit.
Ironically, the fact that most "decent" domain names have been taken is forcing startups to put more time into coming up with a name which could ultimately help their searchability, though it does come at the expense of the "speakability" of their name.
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#3Part of the problem seems to be the programmer's habit of using the shortest possible variable names and commands: ls, cp, mv, and how many programs have variables a, b, x, and so on. There shouldn't be any drawback to using longer descriptive names (or funny, arbitrary names) for languages since you won't have to type them often; and they are much superior in searchability. The more unique the better for searchability, in fact.
Also, can anyone tell me what he's talking about in making C "easy to search on the internet." Finding general information on C has been extremely frustrating.
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#4Microsoft is the worst for this! .NET is a terrible name to search for. SQL Server Reporting Services is also awful. At least they've seemed to have gotten the clue with Silverlight.
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#5Part of the problem seems to be the programmer's habit of using the shortest possible variable names and commands: ls, cp, mv, and how many programs have variables a, b, x, and so on. There shouldn't be any drawback to using longer descriptive names (or funny, arbitrary names) for languages since you won't have to type them often; and they are much superior in searchability. The more unique the better for searchabili…
The following page explains the usage of the "+" operator on Google search, and mention that some common terms like "C++" receive a special treatment: http://www.googleguide.com/plus_operator.html
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#6I think "Factor" is a good name for a programming language, it's memorable and it conjures up appropriate mental images. That the word has both of these qualities ensures that it will be used for many other things, and this will be true of most good names. Instead of worrying about the googlability of "Factor", can't we count on people to at least search for "Factor programming language"? And if Google isn't already returning good enough results for that now, I think I'd rather wait a little while for search technology to catch up than compromise on the names of my programming languages.
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#7Look to the pharmaceutical industry: Aspirin, Pinex, Panodil, .............
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#8Similarly, I can only imagine the frustration of Jazz fans when they try looking for their favorite guitarist. :)
Although in this case the last name can help.
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#9Excellent point, but you can easily expand the list way beyond programming languages. Django is a nice one, sure it is a great tribute to a great musician, but I keeping having to tell google to leave out 'music' when searching for info.
Search engines ought to be smart enough to determine the general context of your searches across several searches in a row but it seems that that is not yet available.
Re: Think twice before naming your new programming language
#10His advice would seem to distill to "invent a new word as a name for your language". Would this be a sensible thing to do?
What would some examples of "good" programming language names be? Most languages I can think of have names from {English words} or existing proper nouns and so any non new name has a potential to clash on doing a web search at least till the language name becomes popular enough to rise to the top.
Do we really want new computer language authors to create nonsense phrases as names for their languages?