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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

#491

Post by eigenspace »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #405
longemen3000 wrote: post #285

That is one thing i like about the Julia package ecosystem. The general Registry (where package metadata is stored and where you go to register a new package), recommends using explicit names over short acronyms. For example, DifferentialEquations.jl is a package that does differential equations in julia (recognizable via the .jl suffix). What does Garlic.jl do? Exactly, garlic (the vegetable) modelling.

Does Julia registry have active moderation? Otherwise I'd expect to see 99 different variations of DifferentialEquations.jl

Yes, but it's fairly light-touch moderation. Newly registered first packages go through some automatic checks, and if they pass all those checks they are put on a 3-day waiting period for community to give feedback or raise objections to the package, and then at the end of the 3-day period, if nobody blocks it, the package is registered.

One of the automatic checks is a name similarity check, and if the name is too similar to an existing name, then the package is blocked from being auto-merged. At that point, someone will look at it, and there'll be a discussion on whether or not the name is okay. A lot of the time, the response is just "this is a false positive" and the package is greenlit. Other times, there's a discussion on whether or not the name is acceptable, and some alternative suggestions are given.

_______________

There was a little episode recently where someone tried to register a package with the same name as an existing package, but with two letters tacked onto the end of the name. Their package was just a fork of an existing package, but with a minor patch applied becuase they were frustrated that maintainers of the existing package weren't responding to pull requests.

The system automatically flagged the name, and the person was initially upset that they couldn't just register their fork, but within a couple hours we tracked down a maintainer to fix the existing package, and then we added this person as a maintainer to the original package so that they could review and accept pull requests to the package themselves. I think this ended up being a better solution for everyone involved.

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

#492

Post by ozyschmozy »

ezconnect wrote: post #403
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…

The problem with current naming is it now using common names like coffee and it's hard to search for them or relate to them. At least the old Unix naming are kinda unique and sometimes means something. Unlike today.

Yep. Cat, find, git, date, gimp, gnu. All very distinctive, easy to search for

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

#494

Post by lunias »

The names have always been quirky, but the new names mostly seem to be chosen for some branding / marketing reason (which I don't like). You can basically put "[any noun] javascript library" into google and find something. The space is so saturated that the names have become more and more disconnected from what they describe. Someone should go create labubu.js so people are less inclined to do so themselves. You can benchmark it with matcha (not to be confused with matcha.css).

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

#495

Post by jrm4 »

Arcuru wrote: post #214
jrm4 wrote: post #201

I'll die on the proverbial hill that the absolute worst instance of this has always been GIMP, which could have perhaps eaten Adobe's lunch MANY years ago. It was and perhaps still is, a solid competitor to Photoshop, but any unfamiliar grownup is, quite reasonably, going to never ever ever trust anything to do serious work with a name like that.

I agree GIMP is a bad name, but is it really a 'solid' competitor to Photoshop? My impression has been that it was never close to being competitive on features. I've only used either of them very briefly so I may be wildly wrong though.

I think it could have been -- which is to say, I think a better name earlier on could have well been what could have gotten more contributors etc etc. Network effects and such.

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

#496

Post by jrm4 »

layer8 wrote: post #219
jrm4 wrote: post #201

I'll die on the proverbial hill that the absolute worst instance of this has always been GIMP, which could have perhaps eaten Adobe's lunch MANY years ago. It was and perhaps still is, a solid competitor to Photoshop, but any unfamiliar grownup is, quite reasonably, going to never ever ever trust anything to do serious work with a name like that.

Wait until you learn about Git. ;)

If I have to "wait and learn about it" then it's not the same, now is it?

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

#497

Post by jollyllama »

wmf wrote: post #137
jollyllama wrote: post #132

Unfortunately this article misses the worst failure of naming: name collisions.

Yeah, if we followed this advice every language would have four different packages named http-client.

Indeed, however I would point out that the approach of naming things after elements or processes ex. Sodium results in not-so-unique names in certain contexts. Ex. if you're working in a lab that deals with the element or process, then confusion can result with colleagues.

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

#498

Post by [deleted] »

rconti wrote: post #233
ModernMech wrote: post #122

I can't call my new formula translation language FORTRAN because it's been taken, as have many other names. So now to avoid collisions, it's named after my cat.

FIVETRAN is a weird name for a cat, but I guess it prevents mix-ups at the vet.

[deleted]

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

#499

Post by jrm4 »

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #438
layer8 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until you learn about Git. ;)

Be careful. The language police have already got rid of "master". They were eyeing up gimp for a takeover or rename but I don't think it got very far. Perhaps all their energy was spent on removing the slavery from git.

Sorry, I do have to say "touch grass" here.

It's not about "me being personally offended."

It's about professionalism. It's a tradeoff. I see both sides of getting rid of e.g. "master;" but GIMP is so well beyond. Even if you make the argument that it's not offensive you're still stuck with a name that absolutely connotes "this thing is not going to be good at things."

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

#500

Post by marcosdumay »

orthoxerox wrote: post #462
wombatpm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant XKCD Https://xkcd.com/1168/

To quote bash.org (or qdb.us?), you have to talk to tar with a German accent: tar xzf file.tgz where xzf stands for "extrakt ze feil"

It's `xaf`, because the modern world is way too complex for simple Germanic rules to solve it.

But GNU tar was never the issue. It's almost completely straight forward, the only problem it has is people confusing the tar file with the target directory. If you use some UNIX tar, you will understand why everybody hates it.

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