3 ms·

Bad product names confuse me

7 points by wkoszek 11y ago

wonkaWonka 11y ago
Bah! This is an attempted advertisement for Ansible, more than it is article attempting to be informative. > for developers and sysadmins Sounds pretty clear to me. If you don't know what that is, then it's not for you. Thing is, last time I checked Docker is Linux, Linux, Linux, and nothing else. They don't really make any mention of that. Probably deliberately so, because they want to keep their reputation clear of any constraints. I think the same goes for Ansible, but correct me if I'm wrong. But everybody is in the game of making broad mindless generalizations, especially when it comes to "cloud" services, because everyone's trying to get you to pay money for something you'll never be able to put your hands on, or stand in the same room with. But seriously, all of these things are mostly about servers in warehouse-like datacenters a thousand miles away, and no one will ever dare say that, because it kills the glamour. So whatever.
- neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
  > This is an attempted advertisement for Ansible Even though the author clearly states he uses Docker?
- wkoszek 11y ago
  I have no good/bad feelings about any of these products. I just picked 2 examples and compared their naming/advertising, just to give some background for a discussion.
rogerthis 11y ago
I've always thought Parse to be a very bad name for that product/service. Fortunately, Google has learnt that parse.com refers to Parse.
- wkoszek 11y ago
  Same here, especially that "parse" in the technical terms is so suggestive. You enter the website and wonder: what type of compiler/regex technology this startup is doing. Instead of e.g.: "Parse is a Backend as a Service. It's for developers who need backend, but don't want to deal with servers".
neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
I think the title is misleading, but have to agree with the content. How many times do you go to some technical project page and have no idea what the project actually does? Sometimes you get a vague description, sometimes you get a list of features, or worse you get a changelog for the front page. If you want people who don't know anything about your tool to use it, first make sure they know what it is, then give them a reason to use it. Ask yourself: "What is X? Why would I use X?" If you can't answer that easily on your project's page, then people who have no idea what your project is may never know.
PhantomGremlin 11y ago
I've given up on understanding most of these "hip" websites and products. If I can't quickly figure out exactly what the company does, I just use Wikipedia. Much simpler. For example, just a week ago we had a discussion here[1] about an aspect of Heroku. I didn't know what they did, so I visited their home page.[2] Lots of buzzwords and pretty little diagrams. But, for me, Wikipedia was so much better[3]. The first paragraph described it succinctly. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10088596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10088596 [2] https://www.heroku.com/ https://www.heroku.com/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku
- wkoszek 11y ago
  2nd good example in this thread. Funny thing is how they also hyde stuff behind made up naming: "dynos". But Heroku isn't alone. I started using OpenShift which has "gears" ...

7 points by wkoszek 11y ago

Bah! This is an attempted advertisement for Ansible, more than it is article attempting to be informative. > for developers and sysadmins Sounds pretty clear to me. If you don't know what that is, then it's not for you. Thing is, last time I checked Docker is Linux, Linux, Linux, and nothing else. They don't really make any mention of that. Probably deliberately so, because they want to keep their reputation clear of any constraints. I think the same goes for Ansible, but correct me if I'm wrong. But everybody is in the game of making broad mindless generalizations, especially when it comes to "cloud" services, because everyone's trying to get you to pay money for something you'll never be able to put your hands on, or stand in the same room with. But seriously, all of these things are mostly about servers in warehouse-like datacenters a thousand miles away, and no one will ever dare say that, because it kills the glamour. So whatever.

neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
> This is an attempted advertisement for Ansible Even though the author clearly states he uses Docker?
wkoszek 11y ago
I have no good/bad feelings about any of these products. I just picked 2 examples and compared their naming/advertising, just to give some background for a discussion.

rogerthis 11y ago

I've always thought Parse to be a very bad name for that product/service. Fortunately, Google has learnt that parse.com refers to Parse.

wkoszek 11y ago
Same here, especially that "parse" in the technical terms is so suggestive. You enter the website and wonder: what type of compiler/regex technology this startup is doing. Instead of e.g.: "Parse is a Backend as a Service. It's for developers who need backend, but don't want to deal with servers".

neoCrimeLabs 11y ago

I think the title is misleading, but have to agree with the content. How many times do you go to some technical project page and have no idea what the project actually does? Sometimes you get a vague description, sometimes you get a list of features, or worse you get a changelog for the front page. If you want people who don't know anything about your tool to use it, first make sure they know what it is, then give them a reason to use it. Ask yourself: "What is X? Why would I use X?" If you can't answer that easily on your project's page, then people who have no idea what your project is may never know.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago

I've given up on understanding most of these "hip" websites and products. If I can't quickly figure out exactly what the company does, I just use Wikipedia. Much simpler. For example, just a week ago we had a discussion here[1] about an aspect of Heroku. I didn't know what they did, so I visited their home page.[2] Lots of buzzwords and pretty little diagrams. But, for me, Wikipedia was so much better[3]. The first paragraph described it succinctly. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10088596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10088596 [2] https://www.heroku.com/ https://www.heroku.com/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroku

wkoszek 11y ago
2nd good example in this thread. Funny thing is how they also hyde stuff behind made up naming: "dynos". But Heroku isn't alone. I started using OpenShift which has "gears" ...