211–220 of 366 posts
Thanks for doing this. You're very much appreciated. (BTW I love the name and the logo!!)
Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?
So I do product marketing for a living, and have launched a whole wack of things with good and bad and boring names. The fact that CockroachDB is consistently on top of HN with each thing they do is pretty strong evidence that they're doing just fine with the name they have, and probably doing even better than if they had a milquetoast tech startup-esque name. Also, they know what their sales cycles look like. They h…
I think the dismissal that business people won't look at it because of the name is purely opinion-based. But what do I know?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mongo is a derogatory term in spanish. But hey! not english so no problem.
"Deragatory" isn't the problem; the issue is whether it invokes visceral feelings of disgust. Many terms can be used as an insult, but are still tolerable as a name because a) they have non-insulting usages, and b) the emotional response does not rise to the level of "visceral disgust". The Spanish Wikipedia suggests many usages of the term "mongo", which probably wouldn't persist if the term was so repulsive: https:…
Edit: Now that my memory kicked in, it's racist as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a spaniard and mongo is an insult. [removed unnecessary snarky comment]
I think SilasX is not suggesting that it isn't a insult, but rather that a word being an insult is not what really matters as far as naming is concerned. What matters, according to him, is whether the word automatically elicits a strong negative emotional reaction. That a lot of words that elicit such a reaction are used as insults is mostly incidental to the argument.
Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?
So I do product marketing for a living, and have launched a whole wack of things with good and bad and boring names. The fact that CockroachDB is consistently on top of HN with each thing they do is pretty strong evidence that they're doing just fine with the name they have, and probably doing even better than if they had a milquetoast tech startup-esque name. Also, they know what their sales cycles look like. They h…
Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?
So now the top thread is about how terrible HN is for bikeshedding instead of talking about the actual topic... except this top thread is also not talking about the actual topic. Worth considering, imo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…
> It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Not taking a stance either way on the name, but that is the definition of bike-shedding (aka law of triviality). A committee won't vote for my nuclear plant because the bike shed is red. The bike shed's color has concrete effects on adoption. EDIT: I would just like to acknowledge the irony of bike-shedding bike-sheddin…
> ...but that is the definition of bike-shedding (aka law of triviality)
> A committee won't vote for my nuclear plant because the bike shed is red.
> The bike shed's color has concrete effects on adoption.
> Parkinson observed that a committee whose job is to approve plans for a
> nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively
> unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for
> the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself,
> which is far more important but also far more difficult to criticize constructively.
> -- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding
> A reactor is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot
> understand it, so one assumes that those who work on it understand it. On the
> other hand, everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning
> one can result in endless discussions because *everyone involved wants to add a
> touch and show personal contribution*.
> -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
> -- https://books.google.com/books?id=RsMNiobZojIC&pg=PA317Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not at all unfortunate that the world works that way. What's really unfortunate is the founder of this seemingly great database system has decided to not care about how human psychology works. Here's an Wikipedia excerpt on cockroach: > They feed on human and pet food and can leave an offensive odor.[60] They can passively transport pathogenic microbes on their body surfaces, particularly in environments such as…
This guy has a bad track record for naming software. I just read he is also the creator of The Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Kimball_(computer_prog...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…
Not to be an ass but... It so far appears not to be hurting them. In the slightest. This "warning" comes from the HN crowd every time something is posted about CockroachDB. I think it's time to LET IT GO. I for one, completely disagree with you but that's because I have a different understanding of the relationship between the business side and engineering. We are already looked at as eccentric and strange people, ra…
I feel like that is tough to judge because the public has only known them by one name as far as I know. If they switched to this name from another name and saw no difference then we could surmise that the name has had no affect.
Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?
It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every…
So here's my question to you: could you be wrong about this having "concrete effects on adoption"? And if you are wrong, is this just bike shedding?
And to continue the bike shed metaphor, it's about people ignoring nuclear power plant design whose worst case scenario is nuclear meltdown. For CockroachDB 1.0, what's the equivalent, data loss? So are you discussing something technically trivial (colour is easy to understand) over the design (technically complex) that would prevent data loss? If the answer is yes, aren't you bike shedding like a champion?
tl;dr Bike shedders don't know they're bike shedding and think the discussion is very important.