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“I have already used the name for my programming language” (2009)
- beltex 11y agoNote this is from 2009 (before Go was on GitHub, and thus the gopherbot comment imports). Apple ran into a similar issue with Swift. "Looking for the Swift parallel scripting language? Please visit http://swift-lang.org http://swift-lang.org " https://developer.apple.com/swift/ https://developer.apple.com/swift/
- fiatjaf 11y agoLike Go, Swift is a terrible name for a programming language.
- SeanLuke 11y agoWhy? Because it's a common word and difficult to google? I refer you to Java, Python, Ruby, Scheme, Forth, and Lisp.
- gamache 11y agoAll of which were invented before search engines were of much importance.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- forty 11y agoI googled a few of those (including go and swift) and the first result was always about the programming language. I would expect that most people googling "go" would actually like to know about the game (and same for ruby-the stone, python-the snake, and so on).
- navait 11y agoI always assumed that google took my past searches and history into account, that a normal person would get a python.
- mikeash 11y agoBeware that Google is tailoring the results to what it knows about you. If I Google "swift" from a normal window, Apple's main Swift page is the first hit. If I do it from an incognito window, the first hit is the bank transfer provider. Of course, most people who are looking for the programming language will probably be known to Google to be interested in that, so the result isn't necessarily invalid, but neither is it universal.
- scotu 11y agodid you google those keyword "anonymously"? because it's pretty well known that the same google search does not give the same result regardlessly from the user that is searching it. cfr. http://dontbubble.us/ http://dontbubble.us/ as a note, I don't agree with "don't bubble us". Or better I agree but I find the bubble extremely convenient most of the times; when not I do use duckduckgo :)
- fiatjaf 11y agoI just googled "go" in an incognito window and got 10 results referring to "Goiás", a brazilian political division. But that's not exactly the problem. The problem comes up when you're searching for more specific things. Try, for example "go reduce function" (just came up with this example now, I'm sure my argument will be better if you search for an actually real-world edge case) and you'll probably get Go results, but I also get PHP, Javascript and Python results. If, instead, I searched for any of these languages + "reduce function" I would only get relevant results. Swift is even worse.
- nkozyra 11y agoIf the metric is Google-ability," then so are a lot of other languages: C D Go Julia R Rust Google's gotten a lot better when it comes to searches for C++ (formerly always wrote 'cpp'), Go ('golang'), C#, etc. But when you combine a specific search and the language it's still ambiguous for a lot of these languages. Forever the discord between branding and specificity.
- mikeash 11y agoI have long advocated for switching away from normal pronounceable names and to UUIDs for everything. For example, Google's Go could be CFF77685-513C-4B4D-82EC-81C171D52E82 and the older one could be 7EFD13ED-BF35-4547-9701-6E13F0D8911E. If we renamed C to F51AD0F2-8159-4515-BE14-5E9D9AE3372B it would become much easier to search for. Sincerely, 57C1566F-1DA9-4AAB-9F88-E31C4B950DD6
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- thiagowfx 11y ago...because search results will mostly be about Taylor Swift, right? /s
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoHaha - 12px, light grey, right at the bottom of the page. Well done for following the letter of the courtesy law, Apple.
- haylem 11y agoI remember the whole debate over Go's naming very well. There was even at some point a request to rename the language "Issue9" after this thread :) I supposed it resurged now because of the migration from code.google.com to github.com. See the original ticket here: https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9 https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9 I suppose comment 42 (you can't make that stuff up...) is the one that sparked the issue for renaming it "Issue 9".
- kawsper 11y agoTo be fair, Apple named their programming Swift as a tribute to Taylor Swift because she helped them build PR for Apple Music[0]. /s (Sorry I was only joking.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Music#Royalty_payment_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Music#Royalty_payment_po...
- Bognar 11y agoWhat? Apple Music was announced in June 2015, the Swift language has had its name since at least June 2014.
- comrh 11y agoNot sure if kidding... Swift's logo is a bird[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift
- mhurron 11y agoApple Swift - June 2, 2014 Taylor Swift about Apple Music - June 21, 2015. Where are these people getting their time machines?
- batbomb 11y agoGo could consider renaming themselves to GoGo, GoScript, Gopher, Go Jr, or Go Starship.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoGoGoGadgetPrintln?
- mcv 11y agoI would totally support a language where all basic statements are methods of an object called GoGoGadget.
- styluss 11y agoGopherscript has a nice ring to it.
- tux 11y agoor simply Gogle and for file extension .gg But I like GoGo name too, also could be used with .gg
- myth_buster 11y agoGØ | Gϴ
- thom_nic 11y agoGo++
- toothbrush 11y ago
- _lce0 11y agoIf you don't know who McCabe is, he was most know for his software change control, TrueChange[0] .. which was a huge pain in our development process ;) 0: http://www.mccabe.com/cm.htm http://www.mccabe.com/cm.htm
- adamzubi700 11y agohttp://googler700.blogspot.com/ http://googler700.blogspot.com/
- Justsignedup 11y agoI mean these things are bound to happen. He does not have a trademark. This is not free advertising. Imagine someone bought his book thinking its for google's "go" language. That is not a happy customer, that is an upset one who wants a refund. It would only be right for google to reach out and at least start a discussion. If they don't sounds like they are just in the mindset of "we're google, we do what we want" (which is kinda of not too far from the truth)
- riffraff 11y agothis happened in 2009
- supermatt 11y agoSure he has a trademark. Its just not registered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregistered_trademark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregistered_trademark
- nkozyra 11y agoNot my area of expertise, but I'd think "Go" would be very difficult to trademark given it's a generic term.
- johnnyfaehell 11y agoIt's not very generic for a name. Remember "That's hot" got trademarked successfully.
- MatthewWilkes 11y ago> Status changed to Unfortunate. Wonderful.
- Navarr 11y agoThere are 160 issues labeled "Unfortunate."
- daveloyall 11y agoI think all but two are related to golang. The other two issues are attached to some project named iris.
- lubomir 11y agoLooks kind of similar to the situation where Apple released their Swift while there already was a language with that name [1]: 1: http://swift-lang.org/main/ http://swift-lang.org/main/
- rdsnsca 11y agoAt least Apple acknowledged that their was another language named Swift.
- dhimes 11y agoFrom 2009.
- asadhaider 11y agoThoughtWorks also have a continuous delivery platform called Go[1]. [1] http://www.go.cd/ http://www.go.cd/
- fiatjaf 11y ago"Go" is a terrible name, by the way. Google's own programming language is by far the worst language to search on Google.
- acomjean 11y ago>Google's own programming language is by far the worst language to search on Google. I always found this somewhat ironic. It seems that when a language is mistakenly given a unsearchable name (go & rust I'm looking at you) then searching with lang after works better (golang). They should have just called it golang and been done with it.
- mindcrime 11y agoThey should have just called it golang and been done with it. Yep. For the life of me, I don't understand why they didn't either do that, or change the name to "Issue 9".
- artursapek 11y agoWhat's so hard about spelling out "golang"? http://golang.org http://golang.org
- smcl 11y agoYou're right and it is a teeny bit ironic that google's own programming language is not particularly google-able. However I find that "golang <stupid-go-question>" does the trick pretty well.
- fiatjaf 11y agoYes, but it hides results where the author has not used the word "golang".
- shawnps 11y agoI don't understand why people find it so hard to search for Go-related things, and would love to see some example bad searches. Here are some that do work: "string formatting go" "regex go" "convert string to int go" "web server go" "json go" "smtp client go" "http request go" Edit: oh, and can't forget "learn go" :)
- mikeash 11y agoIf you value uniqueness, don't name your stuff with the 49th most common English word.
- forty 11y agoExactly. And I would suggest avoiding 2 letter words as well :)
- pknerd 11y agoIronically Googlers could not google the name before picking it for their new language.
- guide42 11y agoIt's also a board game. http://senseis.xmp.net/?Go http://senseis.xmp.net/?Go But Google already knows that. The game has been played for more than 4000 years.
- mikeash 11y agoBut the name "Go" is Japanese and that name is "only" about 1300 years old. Amusingly, much like Go the programming language, Go the game is kind of hard to search for. I usually have much more success if I use the Chinese (weiqi) or Korean (baduk) names.
- DonaldFisk 11y agoIt's actually two board games. There's also Waddington's Go: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7097/go-international-travel-game http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7097/go-international-tra... Which proves Francis McCabe's point. Before naming something, it's a good idea to see if someone's already given something in the same category (a board game, a programming language) the name you thought of. And nowadays, we have search engines such as Google that can be used for this ... which Google could have used. It's now also a good idea to make sure your name is easily searchable. Go is a common stop word ... so maybe that's why Go! failed to show up when searched for? The decent thing for Google to do is to return McCabe's language in search results if the user types in Go! with the exclamation mark. It has no trouble returning the programming languages when C, lisp, or basic are entered. Better still would be to rename their language to Golang, its alternative name.
- meesles 11y agoConsidering this is 6 years old, I think the general rule is you have to actively work to protect your IP or you lose it. Unless this guy got some lawyers, I don't think there's much to be said here...
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoChange it to golang. They're already using that commonly.
- frou_dh 11y agoNot sure what the submitter's intention is in linking a 5 year old bug report. An issue that's easy to form a drive-by opinion on, so, bikeshedding fodder?
- Graham67 11y agogo two
- Graham67 11y agogo-one go-two