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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

#451

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #439
necovek wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even GNU is a recursive acronym, Emacs a convoluted one... What's Perl, Python, Java... all about? Remember how JavaScript was named? Don't mention Go (go-lang) or Pascal... Git, Mercurial, CVS anyone? I believe this makes much ado about nothing.

Pascal is probably the most sensible name, as far as traditional naming schemes go. Names after Blaise Pascal, mathematician and one of the two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Pretty fair association and tribute. Git as a name is our daily reminder that pre-mainstream programmers were rebellious against the mainstream (to put it as generously as I could) before corporate interests took over. but i encourwge y…

>Git

The stupid content tracker.

Still one of my favourite names.

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

#452

Post by ndkap »

To be honest, `awk` that the author references to as a good name, is not. It's just the initials of authors, which does not convey anything about what the tool does. It's yet another cognitive tax.

And I would go further, the extremely shortened names in Linux and other places is problematic too, given that most terminals now allow name completion on tab.

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

#453

Post by DSMan195276 »

lanstin wrote: post #286
DSMan195276 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but then the names get needlessly long and one of the things we generally like (especially for command-line programs) is names that are short and easy to type. If we're going to make this argument then why not call the unix tools `concatenate`, `difference`, `stream-editor`, etc. Those are way better names in terms of telling you what they do, but from a usability standpoint they stink to type out. Libraries…

libeay

`eay` is just the initials of the original author, so basically the same thing as `awk`.

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

#454

Post by rsynnott »

munificent wrote: post #94

> This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field. This article would certainly disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Department_of_Def... > the Golden Gate Bridge tells you it spans the Golden Gate strait. Is that even a meaningful distinction? Does anyone think, "Gee, I'd really like to cross the Golden Gate strait?" or do they think "I want to get to Napa?". > The Hoover…

Military codenames are a bit different; they're deliberately random words, assigned so that no-one can guess the nature of the programme based on the name.

(Companies sometimes do this, too, for internal stuff.)

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

#455

Post by Joker_vD »

kazinator wrote: post #298
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…

cat is arguably from catenate , which is the smarter, shorter version of concatenate . By default, unadorned catenation is a joining (literally "making into a chain"), which is always together/with, so the con prefix is redundant. If you ever need a derivative of catenate that means splitting apart, you can coin discatenate , where the dis then plays an essential role. Also, why is it that people are gregarious when…

> Or why didn't they just gregate?

Because that's not how the prepositions worked in Latin. E.g. "Marcus ex casa exit" ("Marcus went out of the house") requires both the "ex" preposition and the "ex-" prefix in the verb. Heck, even today similar things can happen in English: "they gathered together", that sentence has two instances of "gather" in it.

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

#456

Post by squigz »

ndkap wrote: post #452

To be honest, `awk` that the author references to as a good name, is not. It's just the initials of authors, which does not convey anything about what the tool does. It's yet another cognitive tax. And I would go further, the extremely shortened names in Linux and other places is problematic too, given that most terminals now allow name completion on tab.

Now? Tab completion has been a thing for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_completion

Tab completion being a thing does not take away from short, memorable names being easier to use. You'd likely end up typing more on average, due to multiple programs sharing the first few letters of their name

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

#457

Post by buzzardbait »

munificent wrote: post #94

> This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field. This article would certainly disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Department_of_Def... > the Golden Gate Bridge tells you it spans the Golden Gate strait. Is that even a meaningful distinction? Does anyone think, "Gee, I'd really like to cross the Golden Gate strait?" or do they think "I want to get to Napa?". > The Hoover…

Good job pointing out the logical inconsistencies so succinctly. That article is yet another case of a solution looking for a problem.

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

#458

Post by djmips »

This essay is not consistent. They ramble between company names Google ( which is a great name ) and tools like AWK which is not descriptive at all but a good name.

But I do share his pain with onboarding when I joined Humungous Entertainment the tools or systems were called Sputm, Phlegm, Mucus, SPIT. There might have been a Bile. :-)

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

#459

Post by joleyj »

djmips wrote: post #458

This essay is not consistent. They ramble between company names Google ( which is a great name ) and tools like AWK which is not descriptive at all but a good name. But I do share his pain with onboarding when I joined Humungous Entertainment the tools or systems were called Sputm, Phlegm, Mucus, SPIT. There might have been a Bile. :-)

Have a Stoolap https://github.com/stoolap/stoolap

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

#460

Post by thaumasiotes »

necovek wrote: post #274
tharkun__ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tar zxvf Is burnt into my brain. One of my earliest Linux command line experience required untaring zipped tars. So yeah that xkcd is "not funny" to me in that sense. Of course I couldn't tell you pretty much any other use without a man page.

z requires it's compressed with gzip and is likely a GNU extension too (it was j for bzip2 iirc). It's also important to keep f the last because it is parametrized and a filename should follow. So I'd always go with c (create) instead of x (extract), as the latter assumes an existing tar file (zx or xz even a gzipped tar file too; not sure if it's smart enough to autodetect compress-ed .Z files vs .gz either): with c…

    tar xvzf file.name
is always a valid command, whether file.name exists or not. When the file doesn't exist, tar will exit with status '2', apparently, but that has no bearing on the validity of the command.

Compare these two logs:

    $ tar xvzf read.me
    tar (child): read.me: Cannot open: No such file or directory
    tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
    tar: Child returned status 2
    tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

    $ tar extract read.me
    tar: invalid option -- 'e'
    Try 'tar --help' or 'tar --usage' for more information.
Do you really not understand the difference between "you told me to do something, but I can't" and "you just spouted some meaningless gibberish"?
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