31–40 of 563 posts
If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called "emacs" does?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least you weren't the guy hitting a wall when trying to get a testing library integrated because it was named Testacular
Back in college we had an old program used to analyse oscilloscope data named ANAL.
What does chef do? Garden? Pig? Burp?
Nonsense.
If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called "emacs" does?
> Even when engineers get creative, there’s logic: a butterfly valve actually looks like butterfly wings. You can tell how the name relates to what it actually defines, and how it can be memorable.
Editor MACroS still has a logic. It isn't just random.
If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called "emacs" does?
Hmm, this looks like a nonsense word, but sometimes words look like nonsense when you write them backwards, maybe it's a scame?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"purpose will change" argument actually proves the opposite point. When a tool's scope expands beyond its name, the descriptive name tells you something went wrong. But even if so, if you have to rename "login-page-config-service" to "auth-config-service" it is not really a big deal, renaming will be much cheaper if you're renaming to descriptive names. Most importantly though, I wouldn't optimize to avoid renaming (…
> 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…
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 as "fish" → "zephyr." My argument was that this renaming won't be necessary if you started by picking up the proper name at the first place, and it's very unlikely to have the need to rename it. We shouldn't be optimizing to avoid renaming. That's trading a rare maintenance event for permanent cognitive overhead.