Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

lr0.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 563 posts

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

#171

Post by accrual »

dwaltrip wrote: post #126

The author is vastly overestimating the general legibility and familiarity of things they happen to know well and are used to. Boring names are also very generic, by definition, and thus often harder to remember. Especially when there are 10 other similar tools. Is it sql-validator, sql-schema-validator, schema-validate, db-validator, or god knows what else? Edit: I am in favor of better “sub titles” / descriptive sl…

> Why isn’t there a command line utility called “whatisthis” with a standard protocol that allows tools to give a brief description of what they are?

Cheekily, man?

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

#172

Post by yongjik »

shaftway wrote: post #163
moregrist wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > No chemist wakes up and decides to call it “Steve” because Steve is a funny name and they think it’ll make their paper more approachable. The author is just wrong. Chemistry is fairly jam-packed with various cutesy names either to amuse the authors or because they’re attempting to make an algorithm memorable to the field. Off the top of my head: - SHAKE and RATTLE: Bond constraint algorithms. - CHARMm: An MD pack…

> > > No chemist wakes up and decides to call it “Steve” because Steve is a funny name and they think it’ll make their paper more approachable. Lawrencium has entered the chat.

Off-topic, but it always amuses me that the sleepy town of Livermore, CA, known locally for its vineyards and an outlet mall, is immortalized in the Periodic Table, instead of the other greater places like New York or Chicago.

Chicago even had the world's first nuclear reactor, but no luck.

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

#173

Post by themafia »

BoppreH wrote: post #124
munificent wrote: post #94

> This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field. This article would certainly disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Department_of_Def... > the Golden Gate Bridge tells you it spans the Golden Gate strait. Is that even a meaningful distinction? Does anyone think, "Gee, I'd really like to cross the Golden Gate strait?" or do they think "I want to get to Napa?". > The Hoover…

I think the author makes a hard distinction between consumer products and infrastructure/engineering products. The Shelby Cobra has a funny name, but its engine is the memorably named V8. The Hoover Dam is a dam, and the Golden Gate Bridge is a bridge. We can argue about namespace pollution and overly long names, but I think there's a point there. When I look at other profession's jargon, I never have the impression…

> but its engine is the memorably named V8.

You're misremembering. It's the "Windsor V8." Or more specifically the "4.8L Windsor Ford V8."

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

#174

Post by QuercusMax »

plorkyeran wrote: post #98

> grep (global regular expression print), awk (Aho, Weinberger, Kernighan; the creators’ initials), sed (stream editor), cat (concatenate), diff (difference). Even when abbreviated, these names were either functional descriptions or systematic derivations. If you asked someone unfamiliar with unix tools what they thought each of these commands did, diff is the only one which they would have even the slightest chance…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libiberty was always my favorite ridiculous name. It was named so you can link it with -liberty.

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

#175

Post by WatchDog »

There are many different tools that attempt to solve the same problem, with varying levels of competency.

They can't all use the same name. If you want to build a better alternative to an existing solution, you need to choose a different name, this leads to names being arbitrary.

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

#176

Post by bitwize »

groby_b wrote: post #56

Wait 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 need scissors! 61!

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

#177

Post by hyperpape »

lr0 wrote: post #107
hyperpape wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really nice mnemonic. I wish I lived in an alternate universe where Postgres was called PostgreSQL so that it was easier to remember. Perhaps if we start using that, it will take over, like how everyone calls the Go project Golang.

https://www.postgresql.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL

I know.

My point is that almost everyone refers to it as Postgres, because they do not actually value the descriptiveness of "PostgreSQL".

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

#178

Post by jaggederest »

MerrimanInd wrote: post #142

> This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field. The cognitive load is unavoidable and in some ways worse in industries with highly technical names. At one point in my career I was an engine calibrator at a large automotive OEM. Our lexicon included physics industry terms (BMEP, BTDC, VVT, etc), a large software package where every variable, table, and function was an acronym (we had about 75k t…

I thought this was a wonderful example of "some things are just intrinsically challenging to represent in your brain":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZwWG1nK2fY

Apparently they've found structural differences in the brains of people undergoing London's famously difficult taxi qualification.

I think I saw a video that said people studying for "the knowledge" as it's known report massive fatigue.

Post reply on HN