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Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

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Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#311
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whimsical project names fall within a well-understood and used convention. Boy, I wish! I 100% second TFA when I tell you: There are a lot of really really boring people out there that just don't get it. They think "Product Data Exporter" is the perfect project name.

If you call your data exporter "Asparagus" I will throw a thesaurus at you every day until you come up with a better name for it that has some kind of mnemonic link to what it does. "Data Exporter" is okay, but "Catapult" or "Superhighway" or another whimsical name would be okay too, so long as it loosely matches the problem domain in a memorable way.

“Yeet”

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#312
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't cross into personal attack. Also, please don't fulminate in HN comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Isn't describing this comment as "fulmination" snarky, which is itself a violation of the guidelines? It's at least a shallow dismissal of their opinion, for sure. How can you expect people to follow these rules when you yourself don't? Looking at your history, you[0] leave[1] comments[2] like[3] this[4] (shallow dismissals at best, and snark at worse) pretty[5] consistently[6]. What gives? [0] https://news.ycombinat…

Interpretations inevitably differ, but I don't think those comments come close to matching your descriptions and I can't imagine that most users would either. They seem tediously neutral to me.

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#313
post #311
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you call your data exporter "Asparagus" I will throw a thesaurus at you every day until you come up with a better name for it that has some kind of mnemonic link to what it does. "Data Exporter" is okay, but "Catapult" or "Superhighway" or another whimsical name would be okay too, so long as it loosely matches the problem domain in a memorable way.

“Yeet”

I personally would prefer my exporter to focus on precision, not distance.

So clearly, it wouldn't be "Asparagus", it would be "Beef" (as in Kobe).

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#314
post #123
post #108

The author seems to be talking about names for two totally different things, lumping them under the term "component." Whimsical project name? No problem. Whimsical type name within a project? Really bad idea. Whimsical variable name? Don't even think about it. The concept the author is missing is "convention." Whimsical project names fall within a well-understood and used convention. The convention for type and varia…

Reminds me of the classic "how to write unmaintainable code": https://cs.fit.edu/~kgallagher/Schtick/How%20To%20Write%20Un... Especially this bit: Bedazzling Names Choose variable names with irrelevant emotional connotation. e.g.: marypoppins = (superman + starship) / god; This confuses the reader because they have difficulty disassociating the emotional connotations of the words from the logic they're trying to thin…

Thank you for sharing that link. I had been looking for that document on and off for at least a decade. Great stuff.

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#315
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't describing this comment as "fulmination" snarky, which is itself a violation of the guidelines? It's at least a shallow dismissal of their opinion, for sure. How can you expect people to follow these rules when you yourself don't? Looking at your history, you[0] leave[1] comments[2] like[3] this[4] (shallow dismissals at best, and snark at worse) pretty[5] consistently[6]. What gives? [0] https://news.ycombinat…

Interpretations inevitably differ, but I don't think those comments come close to matching your descriptions and I can't imagine that most users would either. They seem tediously neutral to me.

Isn’t that the problem? You see your own shallow dismissals as tediously neutral, but others as violations of the guidelines.

For example, in this comment here that I’m replying to, you caveat what you say, and yet you don’t caveat any of the comments I’ve cited as ”your opinion”, despite them being the same value judgements of someone else’s writing.

“Please stop .” Is about as textbook of a “shallow dismissal” as one could get.

You don’t apply the same rules to yourself, so there’s zero reason or incentive to follow those rules for the rest of us.

Edit: Hey, within an hour of writing this comment, I'm now slowbanned (a thing you at one point claimed was removed from HN). So I guess you don't like dissent either, dang?

Edit2: Since I can't respond (you muted me), the community doesn't evaluate your activity objectively; you're worshipped, and aren't give feedback that represents a reflection of your actual behavior, so an appeal to the masses here isn't an effective argument. The community may disagree with you, but it's actively detrimental to say so, and will apparently create negative repercussions for the folks who do speak out, creating a "chilling effect", preventing you from getting the "bloodbath" you apparently think would be necessary for you to change your behavior.

Additionally, the fact that you've made it harder for me to interact on HN as a result of this conversation is an indication that everything I'm suggesting here is even more true than I initially thought.

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a minuscule problem compared to trying to figure out which of the insane names is the one you need.

A name is usually not enough to determine which library/framework is best for you. This is the _illusion of transparency_ that the author talks about. How would you rename React and Angular such that developers could tell at a glance which one to use? If it's going to require further investigation from the user's part, better to give the project an opaque name to make it clear that further investigation is necessary.

when I'm looking for a css minifier, I sure as hell don't want to wade through weirdly names projects that "require further investigation".

And definitiely not inside the company I work at

Edit "And I will never know love because of Galactus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#317
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interpretations inevitably differ, but I don't think those comments come close to matching your descriptions and I can't imagine that most users would either. They seem tediously neutral to me.

Isn’t that the problem? You see your own shallow dismissals as tediously neutral, but others as violations of the guidelines. For example, in this comment here that I’m replying to, you caveat what you say, and yet you don’t caveat any of the comments I’ve cited as ”your opinion”, despite them being the same value judgements of someone else’s writing. “Please stop .” Is about as textbook of a “shallow dismissal” as o…

[deleted]

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#318
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Have you heard of API Gateway and/or HTTP routing based on path prefix or header?

You're right about the external interface, but you still need to give a name to the actual service behind the URL. From your point on versioning, I'd assume you'd actually call it UserProfileV2 ? PS: to get back to the original point, you're still stuck with a "UserProfileV2" service that does a lot more than just user profiles, but that's not reflected in the name.

It depends on the language, but I would probably call it `UserProfile` and change a major version even if it's in an entirely different language. Maybe even kept in the same repo.

> PS: to get back to the original point, you're still stuck with a "UserProfileV2" service that does a lot more than just user profiles, but that's not reflected in the name.

From what it said in the original comment, it still seems like a user profile to me.

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#319
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interpretations inevitably differ, but I don't think those comments come close to matching your descriptions and I can't imagine that most users would either. They seem tediously neutral to me.

Isn’t that the problem? You see your own shallow dismissals as tediously neutral, but others as violations of the guidelines. For example, in this comment here that I’m replying to, you caveat what you say, and yet you don’t caveat any of the comments I’ve cited as ”your opinion”, despite them being the same value judgements of someone else’s writing. “Please stop .” Is about as textbook of a “shallow dismissal” as o…

Users here are extremely quick to push back if we do something they find objectionable. That's in fact how the moderation practices have evolved in the first place—by intense operant conditioning: if you do X and immediately get swarmed by wasps, you're less likely to do X in the future.

Slowbanning and rate limiting are two different things. Your account is rate limited. That's standard practice in a number of cases, including (a) when an account is posting too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or getting involved in flamewars, and/or (b) there's reason to believe that an account is the latest incarnation of a user whom we've banned several times in the past. The bar for moderation penalties is a lot lower when we seem to be dealing with a serial abuser.

Edit: I deleted an earlier response to you because I didn't have time to finish it (I wanted to respond to the bit about 'slowbanning'). If I had seen that you'd already responded to it in your parent comment, I wouldn't have deleted it. The original text was:

We've already established that you interpret those comments very differently than I do. The question then would be: is there any way to

I post that sort of moderation comment all the time—tens of thousands of them by now. If the community agreed with you, we'd never hear the end of it; in fact, it would be a bloodbath. So I don't think the community agrees with you.

Re: Software component names should be whimsical and cryptic

#320
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems that names for projects follow the same rule as troll names in the japanese light novel Overlord. Short names, like "Gru" were reserved for the most powerful trolls because there were only so many combinations of three letters. Long names on the other hand were a sign of weakness and cowardice - bringing ridicule to those who introduced themselves like that.

Sed and awk kind of sound like high-level troll names.

Awk, i underestand (Aho, We...) but sed ? Stream editor ?
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