Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still think of the short-lived Apple eMac when I read it.
It's funny how they sold that into 2006, with a CRT still
They had to because the RDF was based on CRT technology, originally.
Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
111–120 of 563 posts
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> renaming will be much cheaper if you're renaming to descriptive names Idk, renaming things that shipped is a PITA. Say you wanted to rename `fish` to `a-decent-shell`. - Packages in all distros would need to be renamed. - Configuration for all systems using/having fish would need to change. - Scripts would need to change, from the shebang to the contents if necessary. - Users would need to understand that they now…
> Say you wanted to rename `fish` to `a-decent-shell` You just made my argument. Renaming is hard precisely because you shipped with the wrong name. That's why you should get it right from the start. Every cost you listed [distro packages, configs, scripts, docs, domain] exists whether you rename to something descriptive OR another random word. The migration pain is identical. "Fish" → "decent-shell" costs the same a…
> We shouldn't be optimizing to avoid renaming.
> you should get it right from the start.
This is also optimizing for not renaming, just in a different way; also, you just said renaming was cheap, so which is it?
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
More to the point, what does a John Deere S7 600 do, or a 310 G-Tier, or a Z515E ZTrak? Emacs is an editor. That part is descriptive: an editor edits. The product name is not expected to describe what the product is. The general product category is what does that.
> The product name is not expected to describe what the product is. There are some exceptions, but the agriculture machinery industry has actually gotten pretty good at making the names useful, with reasonable consistency across brands. S7 600: 600 tells that it is a class 6 combine, which is a value farmers understand as it pertains to the combine's capacity. For tractors, the John Deere 8R 230 sees 8 indicate a lar…
Useful if you already know the basics of what it is. My point is that "S7 600" by itself doesn't tell you anything if you don't have some knowledge of the product already. The knowledge that it's a combine is separate. Similarly, "emacs" tells you nothing if you don't know it, but the generic term "editor" is descriptive.
Software doesn't generally encode product attributes into the name the way 230 means 230 horsepower and such, but that's because software doesn't really have things like that to put in the name in the first place. Most software doesn't have specific variants like that, and software that does is almost always differentiated on feature set rather than numbers.
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#114Wait till you work in a corporate environment, where Project Fuzzy Mustard triggered a violation of the ElastoFish metric in the Yellow Hills subsystem, leading to a Code Mild Lavender with a side of Pink Sprinkles.
I worked in one that had lettuce, tomato and celery in the stack.
We have a boulangerie and a fromagerie
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#115> programming shifted from corporate mainframe work to the community builders > which is good but then: > Our field deserves better than a zoo of random nouns masquerading as professional nomenclature Okay? So is this professional nomenclature or the work of community builders? I think: everyone should code, it should not be an elitist profession, we don't need to all accommodate busy professionals, i'm fine with cor…
It’s all fun and games until you have to be like “blastoise deleted our database backups”
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#116Irrelevant. LLMs know all the names. In 1 year they will be doing all the SSHing and terminaling.
Quickly: name the AVX2 instructions that the compiler emits for math calculations
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#117Preach! The worst excuse I hear is "but if we have a meaningless name it can't become inaccurate later when the project changes!".
Uhm yeah. That's like saying "if stab myself to death now I can't die of dementia in old age!"
Edit: look, it's here! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46237390
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#118Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#119First it was racehorses. Then it was prescription medications. Then software.
I hope this goes no further.
Re: Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
However once you learn that sed means stream editor, you won't ever forget it. libsodium is forgettable.
That's part of the point, I believe. It's not about being always able to guess the function from first sight. It's also about the function and name serving as mnemonic to each other once you understand how it got named.
I think perhaps the articles argument gets less strong then?
It's claimed grep is "well named" because even though it's not obvious when you first read it, that it being a contraction for "global reg ex print" and hence memorable. I'm not sure the same argument can't be made for libsodium which assuming the reader is familiar with NaCl (the same as the assumption that the previous reader is familiar with regex) then it's an equally memorable name for your crypto library.
There's always a consideration about the context the name is intended and likely to be used in. The article mentions engineering naming and "ibeam", but engineering has it's own technical names an jargon as well. Most people wont know what "4130 tube" means, but people who build bicycle frames or roll cages will - and they're likely to use the less specific term "chromoly" if the don't need to distinguish between 4130 and 4145.
In my head "libsodium" is similar - if you don't know what it (and NaCl) mean, you 100% should keep out of that part of the codebase.