201–210 of 563 posts
It was and perhaps still is, a solid competitor to Photoshop, but any unfamiliar grownup is, quite reasonably, going to never ever ever trust anything to do serious work with a name like that.
> 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…
IMHO, the best names are the ones that are easiest to type. I have read several accounts of authors choosing names for this reason
I sometimes rename other peoples' executables (cf. libraries), not the ones in the traditional UNIX userland, but the ones with goofy names.^1 I will rename them to something I find easier to type and less annoying. I create symbolic links with the original names if I think they will be required^2
With own software, I give every program a number, the source file is named according to the number and the executable name is a short prefix followed by the number. All names are the same length. I have a text file that lists what each program does if I forget
I put a description in a comment at the top of each source file as a sort of header. Then I can do something like
head src/???.l
1. Needless to say, Arthur Whitney's software does not get renamed. No need, he gets it
2. I will also rewrite the argument parsing and "usage:" output if it annoys me
The best way to determine what a program does is to read the source. This is one reason I prefer to compile programs from source instead of using "binary packages"
I also think the names that are chosen for so-called "tech" companies are routinely quite silly, but that's another discussion
GNU's version of Yacc is called Bison. Pine Is Not Elm (even though that was never an official acronym). UNIX was UNICS which was a pun on MULTICS. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what dd stands for. nano is a copy of pico which was the "PIne COmposer". Postfix is a completely opaque portmanteau of post (as in mail) and "bug fix". C++ is "C incremented", and C is the successor of B, which is the successor of B…
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.folklore.computers/HAWoZ...
Yep. Just did a reimage update to Fedora 43, got errors about 'ptyxis' in some shell scripts. Wat (wipes desk and keyboard)? Oh, it's the graphical terminal program (alternative to 'gnome-terminal'). Well, um, ok. However, I will concede, after more digging as to why (as it rankled), that there was a "have to choose a unique name" issue there (even leaving aside trademark issues). I'm resigned (so I suppose signed up…
ptyxis is a word based on the 'pty' base, because it's not the only pty program.
It's a nearly-unique name, which is very good for the task of "discovering what it is".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
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 unavo…
There is actually a good reason not mentioned, not to name tools by their purpose: - the purpose will change Your "silicon-valley-bank-integrator" tool will eventually need to be updated to do something else. Or your "login-page-config-service" tool may eventually do more than just logins. Using gibberish or mythological names gives a nice memorable name that doesn't lead (or mislead) you to believe it does a particu…
A good reason to use arbitrary code names before assigning a more helpful name upon release of something deemed to now be generally usable, beyond developers with caveats.
If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called "emacs" does?
https://google.com/search?q=Eight+Megabytes++And+Constantly+...