5 ms·

I know naming is one of the hardest things in Computer Science, but ".net" always stroke me as the worst name ever. Just like C, C#, Go and Node. You wonder if

by zargath 11y ago

I know naming is one of the hardest things in Computer Science, but ".net" always stroke me as the worst name ever. Just like C, C#, Go and Node. You wonder if they sat down and said "Lets take over the internet, what word do people use the most?". I remember when I started using .net when it was in beta 15y ago, searches on "c#" or ".net" simply wielded no results, because of naming and search engine limitations. When .net launched, it introduced vb.net, that gave Visual Basic support. Not a smooth transition, but it gave some developers a bridge to stand on. I wonder why Microsoft didn't just skip the .Net name to signal a new change in both technology and philosophy instead of getting heads blown up by old developers not understanding the switch.

50CNT 11y ago
There's a lot more of those, isn't there. I still remember the time I got on HN and couldn't tell the tech announcements from the news articles. Can't remember any exact titles, but stuff along the lines of "Coffee.net now ships Espresso". Is that a site that sells elixir of life or some kind of javascript and .NET amalgamation shipping a new library? Go, Python, Lisp, C, C#, Java, all these words getting double booked to make them memorable. If I want to find a place to fix my lisp, do I go on stack-overflow or to a speech therapist? Book on Go patterns? "Java island book"? But luckily nowadays we can abuse word connections to get google to spit out the right things. "Python generators" may refer to a machine to generate snakes, but short of living in an xkcd comic, it'll probably return the right results. It just gets a little muddled when developers find just the right collocation to name their pet python [project?]. But then we just heap on more specifiers. Unless you decide to call your library "THE" in a fit of genius. Like Tabasco in your eyes, it just adds spice to your search experience, doesn't it.
- matt4077 11y ago
  ... off to start the THE project...
  - cafard 11y ago
    A bit late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_multiprogramming_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_multiprogramming_system .
  - 50CNT 11y ago
    Shoot for something absolutely essential, destined to be widely used, and if you feel that sadistic streak shining through, start using a word frequency list[0] to name project parts. "of", "and", "in", "to", "in", "I" and "that" will make for marvellous library names, especially if you find a way to hack around the reserved words of your language of choice. Java and C seem like appropriate choices of language, assuming key parts are actually written in Whitespace and/or Brainf*ck. Make it open source, and nest the layers of WTF so it seems like something you could dive into easily. Maybe if you make all the bad development choices deliberately, you'll actually end up with a beautiful project, because the reverse seems to happen quite frequently. [0]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists
- cafard 11y ago
  That is not the reason I decided against using Groovy on a project (JVM level was), but it would have made life somewhat harder.
  - vorg 11y ago
    Most names of programming languages are based on nouns (e.g. Ruby, Python, Lisp, Java) or noun-like (C, C#, PHP), whereas very few are based on adjectives (only know of Basic and Groovy) or verbs (only know of Go).

by zargath 11y ago

50CNT 11y ago

There's a lot more of those, isn't there. I still remember the time I got on HN and couldn't tell the tech announcements from the news articles. Can't remember any exact titles, but stuff along the lines of "Coffee.net now ships Espresso". Is that a site that sells elixir of life or some kind of javascript and .NET amalgamation shipping a new library? Go, Python, Lisp, C, C#, Java, all these words getting double booked to make them memorable. If I want to find a place to fix my lisp, do I go on stack-overflow or to a speech therapist? Book on Go patterns? "Java island book"? But luckily nowadays we can abuse word connections to get google to spit out the right things. "Python generators" may refer to a machine to generate snakes, but short of living in an xkcd comic, it'll probably return the right results. It just gets a little muddled when developers find just the right collocation to name their pet python [project?]. But then we just heap on more specifiers. Unless you decide to call your library "THE" in a fit of genius. Like Tabasco in your eyes, it just adds spice to your search experience, doesn't it.

matt4077 11y ago
... off to start the THE project...
- cafard 11y ago
  A bit late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_multiprogramming_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THE_multiprogramming_system .
- 50CNT 11y ago
  Shoot for something absolutely essential, destined to be widely used, and if you feel that sadistic streak shining through, start using a word frequency list[0] to name project parts. "of", "and", "in", "to", "in", "I" and "that" will make for marvellous library names, especially if you find a way to hack around the reserved words of your language of choice. Java and C seem like appropriate choices of language, assuming key parts are actually written in Whitespace and/or Brainf*ck. Make it open source, and nest the layers of WTF so it seems like something you could dive into easily. Maybe if you make all the bad development choices deliberately, you'll actually end up with a beautiful project, because the reverse seems to happen quite frequently. [0]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists
cafard 11y ago
That is not the reason I decided against using Groovy on a project (JVM level was), but it would have made life somewhat harder.
- vorg 11y ago
  Most names of programming languages are based on nouns (e.g. Ruby, Python, Lisp, Java) or noun-like (C, C#, PHP), whereas very few are based on adjectives (only know of Basic and Groovy) or verbs (only know of Go).