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Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

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

#441

Post by vrighter »

anyfoo wrote: post #198
pdpi wrote: post #187

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…

> I couldn't for the life of me tell you what dd stands for. Data(set) Definition. But that name does not make any sense whatsoever by itself in this context, neither for the tool (it hardly "defines" anything), nor for UNIX in general (there are no "datasets" in UNIX). Instead, it's specifically a reference to the DD statement in the JCL, the job control language, of many of IBM's mainframe operating systems of yore…

i always think of it as Data Destroyer

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

#442

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

Well that's jargon in any industry. It makes no sense, you take a minute to learn it, and now it's part of your vocabulary.

At least these kinds of acronyms had utility once upon a time, when typing real estate was valuable and you input commands by hand for hours a day. Typing cat vs concat is hours of productivity save.

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

#443

Post by a96 »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #404
eckesicle wrote: post #356

We had this debate at my company and the end result was a ban on “random” service names. So we ended up with “auth service” instead of something like “Galactus”. The problem of course is that “auth service” isn’t searchable in our monorepo and it was a nightmare to find or discuss any info or references to the service itself. Now imagine if docker was called “container manager”. Good luck googling that and disentangl…

It's especially fun once the service is superseded. Guess which one of these services handles MAC address allocation and storage: macaddr_db or atom-util?

"There's a repo called Beyonder. That's got to be what came after Galactus."

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

#445

Post by johnnyanmac »

lmm wrote: post #296
squigz wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're good names because they're short and easily recognizable

There are only so many short names to go around.

Well yea. These guys got dibs some 35f years ago or so. Maybe more. First come first served.

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

#446

Post by mkoubaa »

I could not disagree more. If you say "Ben told Mary that he would work with Scott on Jeff's house on Tuesday, but that Amy preferred Wednesday", that sentence carries a lot of meaning for the speaker and listener because those "names" have meaning to both parties. Nobody would tolerate the descriptive alternative: "General Contracting Company Owner told General Contracting Company Secretary that he would work with General Contracting Company Hired Hand #4 on Customer #22's house on Tuesday but Customer #22 Spouse preferred Wednesday".

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

#448

Post by a96 »

accrual wrote: post #222

I'm happy to see this post, it's something that bugs me every time I have to learn a new tool with a name that's neither A. unique to the project AND B. doesn't describe the project. For example Zola and Hugo, static site generators - great, unique words that has no other meaning to me but the generator. The only other Hugo I know is a character in Bob's Burgers. But choosing random dictionary words like Avocado or S…

> The only other Hugo I know is a character in Bob's Burgers.

Really? It's a very common name, including certain Victor and Boss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_(name)

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

#450

Post by a96 »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #153

I have developed a language for writing structured queries. Based on this article, I have decided to call it SQL.

Calling it Sequel would have been made it easier to pronounce. I think I'll just pronounce it that way in my mind.
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