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Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

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Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#51

Post by bitwize »

I remember learning about Maxwell's Daemon through the Apple II game Dr. Maxwell's Molecule Magic, in which you take the role of the daemon. You must toggle the barrier on and off in order to trap enough gas molecules at high enough pressure to launch a rocket ship. Once you think you have enough, you can then launch the rocket to see how well you did. If you were successful, the rocket would blast off the screen and an image would show of an astronaut on the moon saying "Hi, Mom!" (Speech was provided via PWM through the Apple II speaker.)

Eleven-year-old me was easy to entertain. Especially if rockets, robots, or science was involved.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#52

Post by bitwize »

macintux wrote: post #49
dpassens wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

I've been pronouncing it with the short 'i' for 30 years, but mainly, possibly only, in my head. In 1998 I started a new job, and my boss pronounced "URL" as "earl". That threw me for a loop, had to fight my way through our first conversation before I figured out what he was saying.

I pronounce API as "appy", which sometimes draws quizzical looks (people think I'm using next-level cutesy slang for "application"). But I never could do the "earl" thing. Or "sequel".

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#53

Post by oefrha »

vhodges wrote: post #29
jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

From: https://devrant.com/rants/1101391/my-daily-unix-command-list... unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep.

Except you shouldn’t fsck while mounted.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#54

Post by brianmurphy »

JadeNB wrote: post #40
whartung wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the Matt Damon camp. Always pronounced it that way, never really gave it much thought. Just seems “right” to me.

And now we can perhaps hash out whether the `lib` in `/usr/lib` is pronounced with a long or short 'i'. I hope I'm not the only one who pronounced it the first way with no real thought, and never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

I have always pronounced lib like the word liberal.

I was mind-blown the first time I heard someone pronounce etc as "et-see".

et-see rolls off the tongue so much better than ee-tee-see that it makes perfect sense now.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#55

Post by JadeNB »

dpassens wrote: post #45
JadeNB wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now we can perhaps hash out whether the `lib` in `/usr/lib` is pronounced with a long or short 'i'. I hope I'm not the only one who pronounced it the first way with no real thought, and never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

> Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'?

Yep, that's what I meant to say with:

> … never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.

But maybe the sentence structure was too tortured for it to be clear what I was saying.

> Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

Oh, shoot, even after I noticed the logical pronunciation of "lib" (long 'i') it never occurred to me that the same applied to "bin". I guess I just can't say any paths out loud any more.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#56

Post by bbor »

jamesog wrote: post #37
twobitshifter wrote: post #25

Do you pronounce it as demon or like Matt Damon?

It should more properly be written as dæmon. The æ ("ash") character is usually pronounced more like "ee", as in encyclopædia. I've never heard anyone say "encycloPAYdia" :-)

Fascinating! This is why I stick with nice, clean structural linguistics, this applied stuff gets sticky. I just confirmed on Youtube that the (some?) British people do indeed pronounce "Aesthetic" as "ah-stet-ic" not "ee-stet-ic", and upon diving a bit, it seems that the rule is "don't ask for a rule, you fool! It's 'e' now except for when it isn't." Thanks for the interesting tidbit!

  The letter æ was used in Old English to represent the vowel that's pronounced in Modern English ash, fan, happy, and last: /æ/. Mostly we now spell that vowel with the letter a, because of the Great Vowel Shift.
  When æ appears in writing Modern English, it's meant to be a typographic variant of ae, and is pronounced the same as that sequence of vowel letters would be. So Encyclopaedia or Encyclopædia, no difference.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70927/how-is-%C3...

Highly recommend the protracted arguments in the comments, that's a wonderfully pedantic StackExchange. Big shoutout to someone in 2012 defining "NLP" as an unusual word -- how the world has changed! It's only a matter of time before they open an AP/IB course in NLP...

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#57

Post by bbor »

whartung wrote: post #34
dcow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it officially is pronounced the same as demon. But colloquially I hear a lot of (and sometimes find myself using) “damon”.

I’m in the Matt Damon camp. Always pronounced it that way, never really gave it much thought. Just seems “right” to me.

Hard agree. It's an archaic word, it seems a shame not to revel in that fact whenever you use it! I've been using "automata" a lot recently, and that's another one that is just more fun the unusual way. Also it helps that it's clear either way -- no one will be confused upon hearing "daymon" even if they're not used to it, unlike "etsee", "user-slash-libe", "user-slash-bine". Or, god forbid, "oo-zir slash"...

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#58

Post by Uehreka »

vhodges wrote: post #29
jasoneckert wrote: post #22

The *nix world is full of dark-but-fun terminology. Daemons run the system. New files get 666 (before the umask takes away unnecessary permissions). Parents kill their children before killing themselves. And sometimes you have to kill zombies.

From: https://devrant.com/rants/1101391/my-daily-unix-command-list... unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep.

> unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep.

T E C H N O L O G I C

…

T E C H N O L O G I C

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#59

Post by fwip »

JadeNB wrote: post #55
dpassens wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

> Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Yep, that's what I meant to say with: > … never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation. But maybe the sentence structure was too tortured for it to be clear what I was saying. > Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was…

Perhaps the difference for you is that "bin" is already an English word with an official pronunciation.

Personally, I also use short-i for "lib," because I tend to pronounce shortenings of text as if they were words themselves.

Re: Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

#60

Post by saltcured »

JadeNB wrote: post #55
dpassens wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.

> Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Yep, that's what I meant to say with: > … never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation. But maybe the sentence structure was too tortured for it to be clear what I was saying. > Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was…

Do you pronounce the vowel in /var as in "bar" or as in "bare"?

Also, for those who try to pronounce everything rather than spell them out, where does it end?

I now have a newly discovered, morbid interest in how such folks say path elements like "selinux", "httpd", and "pgsql"...

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