13 ms·

Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike

Very disappointed with HN turning into a 4chan/reddit style trolling board about the name. Guys, we get it that you don't like the name. Can we please stop bike shedding and move on? The people at cockroachdb have obviously seen all your messages but decided it's worth keeping the name. What more is there to talk about? Why not talk about the relative technical merits of this DB?

SilasX 9y ago
It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every time this comes up, would you be so dismissive about critics of naming a product PubesDB? Or GonorrheaDB? Or [n-word]DB? Then you agree that disgust-invoking connotations of the name matter, and we're just haggling over the details. Ubuntu, Mongo, Swagger (edit: Hadoop also) ... they're weird, sure, but they don't evoke the visceral feeling of disgust that cockroaches do.
- networked 9y ago
  On the other hand, if I heard of a database called "CockroachDB" gaining ever-greater adoption, I'd pay close attention to it because it was clearly succeeding despite a marketing handicap.
- thraway2016 9y ago
  procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to They don't need to appeal to any of these suits. Just the technical decision-makers, whose express job it is to choose solutions on their technical merits, not their spurious emotional reactions.
  - siculars 9y ago
    You can't possibly think that's true. If you do you can't have had much experience in buying or selling technology.
    - thraway2016 9y ago
      Selling, no. Buying, definitely. And names don't influence my decisions. A rose by any other name...
  - iamNumber4 9y ago
    There is a sad fact though is that there are many organizations do not have technical people at the decision making level. So these Suits you speak of, won't be able to get past the product name, enough to hear any technical merits of why this technology should ever be considered. Due to disfunctional leadership not even having a role of Chief Technical officer, or Chief Informational officer at the senior leadership level. A lot outsource because they don't want to hire/pay for this in house. It also shifts responsibility away, giving the CEO,COO,CFO, etc... the ability to point fingers at an outside entity. That is a double whammy! internal can't sell/justify it to management, and outside IT providers/contractors can't sell it either. So while they may be surviving with the current name they have, that does not mean they wouldn't be crushing the market share with a different name. If they are getting negative comments about the product name, then that's a warning that they should do market research to find out how many people would avoid the product because of the name. But what the hell do I know, I'm making yet another HN comment post.
- branchless 9y ago
  Just finished my code, I'll commit with git.
- xanderjanz 9y ago
  That's just like your opinion man. Maybe they will love it. Having a name that stands out is generally good marketing actually.
- H1Supreme 9y ago
  > PubesDB Oh man, that's too much. lolol
  - nebabyte 9y ago
    "The DB system designed to handle crazy (sometimes even tangly!) growth. No matter how hairy your data is, Pubes can handle it!"
- genkaos 9y ago
  Mongo is a derogatory term in spanish. But hey! not english so no problem.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    "Deragatory" isn't the problem; the issue is whether it invokes visceral feelings of disgust. Many terms can be used as an insult, but are still tolerable as a name because a) they have non-insulting usages, and b) the emotional response does not rise to the level of "visceral disgust". The Spanish Wikipedia suggests many usages of the term "mongo", which probably wouldn't persist if the term was so repulsive: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongo https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongo
    - genkaos 9y ago
      I'm a spaniard and mongo is an insult. [removed unnecessary snarky comment]
      - networked 9y ago
        I think SilasX is not suggesting that it isn't a insult, but rather that a word being an insult is not what really matters as far as naming is concerned. What matters, according to him, is whether the word automatically elicits a strong negative emotional reaction. That a lot of words that elicit such a reaction are used as insults is mostly incidental to the argument.
        genkaos 9y ago
        If calling your product RetardedDB or MentallyChallengedDB in a professional setting is OK by his standards because it's not spelled in english, then I'm OK with that. That's what mongo means in spanish, btw.
      - SilasX 9y ago
        Okay, there are separate issues going on here; let me try to clarify: Is "mongo" the equivalent of English "retard", in terms of being a low-class insult that invokes a visceral reaction among the majority of the population? I didn't believe that at first; if so, why didn't anyone ever put it in Wikipedia? English has "retard" (in the pejorative sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard#Other_uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard#Other_uses And why doesn't it show up in a top-result Spanish dictionary? http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/mongo http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/mongo If it's merely an insult with numerous other meanings, I don't think it's comparable. But let's assume it is equivalent to "retard". In that case, I would agree that it shouldn't be used as a name. But you have to pick your battles: all words will have that trait in some language. For my part, I would consider the Spanish-speaking market big enough not to expect them to buy [the equivalent of] RetardDB. So I agree there. Edit: I agree with the sibling commenter networked's points.
- codehusker 9y ago
  > It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Not taking a stance either way on the name, but that is the definition of bike-shedding (aka law of triviality). A committee won't vote for my nuclear plant because the bike shed is red. The bike shed's color has concrete effects on adoption. EDIT: I would just like to acknowledge the irony of bike-shedding bike-shedding.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    Alright, if you really want to unpack the metaphor: The bikeshed story is to illustrate overemphasis on something that is trivial. It uses the example of a bikeshed color and a committee wanting to spend a lot of time on it because a) they care a little about it, and b) they understand it well enough for hard-headed members to wade into the dispute rather than trust experts. It's a failure mode -- by stipulation -- because the bikeshed color doesn't matter beyond minor (but real) aesthetic feelings among the committee, that are far outweighed the cost of high-level personnel devoting time to it. Had they been aware of the general dynamic of these thing, they could entirely prevent the loss by moving on; it's purely an internal matter. The bikeshed model ceases to demonstrate a failure mode if and when the bikeshed color has impacts far beyond things under the control of the committee. For example, if the majority of the world's people had a near-religious devotion to destroying facilities that house a blue bikeshed, and that fanaticism was hard to defend against, this would be a valid reason not to make the bikeshed blue, and would warrant the committee's attention. I summarize such situations as "that's not bikeshedding", though of course, to be more technically correct, I should say "that situation does not illustrate the avoidable failure mode in the parable of the bikeshed". Similarly, if adoption matters for more than just that committee -- if they need to convince numerous other committees to adopt the design -- it's likewise "not bikeshedding" because the first committee doesn't have control over all the other ones; with respect to the first, it's an external matter, and they can't stem the loss just by saying "hey, this is trivial". Now, you are correct that, a high enough level, this could work as a bikeshedding example, if you could simultaneously get the entire world to collectively agree on the non-importance of aesthetics on technical matters, and on what counts as technical vs aesthetic. Then the world could play the role of that first committee and say "wow, this is trivial" and it's done. But if that were actually feasible, then that should be your product (producing universal agreement on matters where you have a logical proof-of-correctness), not a database!
- btilly 9y ago
  "CockroachDB..your data will survive." It is both a negative reaction and is memorable. It is not clear which wins, and it isn't your job to decide. Yes, you have an opinion but you may not be right. I remember in the mid-2000s thinking that a particular politician couldn't possibly succeed with a Muslim sounding name. Turns out that a lot of people thought that. Yet Barack Hussein Obama managed to become President. Your opinion has definitely been registered. Continuing to state it has no value.
- robbiemitchell 9y ago
  > It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color Still seems like bikeshedding. It's not your company. You're (probably) not an equity holder. Have you personally been harmed by the name because your company wouldn't let you adopt it in spite of its technical merits? Are you worried it won't succeed because of the name and thus are fighting on the company's behalf for its survival? > Most people ... and others you need to appeal to ... don't want anything to do with cockroaches You're making so much of this up out of thin air. > giving vital advice, for free > As I say every time this comes up As the parent said, the staff have already seen these messages. They have decided to keep the name. Advice is helpful, but once the decision is made, it's not. Let it go.
- rubyn00bie 9y ago
  Not to be an ass but... It so far appears not to be hurting them. In the slightest. This "warning" comes from the HN crowd every time something is posted about CockroachDB. I think it's time to LET IT GO. I for one, completely disagree with you but that's because I have a different understanding of the relationship between the business side and engineering. We are already looked at as eccentric and strange people, rarely if ever has an absurd technology name caused issue. Someone talking about "cockroach" is equivalent to talking about "unicorns" or "git." Its considerably less offensive than talk of "masters" and "slaves." If you think this is such a problem for you, then work on your salesmanship as I wouldn't hesitate to talk to other departments or investors about this product. I was a CTO up until I took medical leave this past October and I cannot stress how important salesmanship is to the role. I think your examples of other databases are hyperbole and not the point. You want them to be equivalent but they aren't. This comes down to what you can sell in your organization and if there is merit to it, then selling it should not be a problem. One last point is other departments don't give a shit what the database technology is called unless it's something to put on their CV. Just call it the "database" as they most certainly will.
  - mburst 9y ago
    > It so far appears not to be hurting them. In the slightest. I feel like that is tough to judge because the public has only known them by one name as far as I know. If they switched to this name from another name and saw no difference then we could surmise that the name has had no affect.
    - rubyn00bie 9y ago
      I disagree that it's tough to judge but that's because they've raised a considerable amount of capital ($53 million over three rounds): https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cockroach-labs#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cockroach-labs#/enti...
      - eridius 9y ago
        The end goal of a company is not to raise venture funding. So you cannot use "they raised capital" as proof that their name isn't a problem. Their name absolutely will hurt their adoption. Maybe the product is good enough that they'll still be successful, but if so, you would expect them to be even more successful if they didn't have such an off-putting name.
- EnFinlay 9y ago
  When people are bike shedding, they aren't doing it to waste time, they think that they are adding value because of `list of bad results of wrong colour here`. So here's my question to you: could you be wrong about this having "concrete effects on adoption"? And if you are wrong, is this just bike shedding? And to continue the bike shed metaphor, it's about people ignoring nuclear power plant design whose worst case scenario is nuclear meltdown. For CockroachDB 1.0, what's the equivalent, data loss? So are you discussing something technically trivial (colour is easy to understand) over the design (technically complex) that would prevent data loss? If the answer is yes, aren't you bike shedding like a champion? tl;dr Bike shedders don't know they're bike shedding and think the discussion is very important.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    I elaborated in much (probably too much) greater detail on the relevance of the bikeshedding metaphor here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310444 I would appreciate your thoughts. With respect to your specific point: if we could resolve how much it matters, then yes, that would obviate the debate. But the bikeshedding metaphor doesn't add much there because it's precisely in dispute about how much it matters.
    - EnFinlay 9y ago
      Well know I feel like a bit like an asshole with how abrasive my response was, sorry. Kudos to you for not escalating. I agree that it resolves to how much it matters, and I guess I disagree with you on how much it matters. How it relates to the bike shedding metaphor is starting to feel like a semantic argument, which is not something I want to continue. In response to your escalated names like PubesDB... my opinion is that I agree I wouldn't work with them, not because of any internal disgust reaction, but because the name signals a level of maturity that I don't want in my stack. Some people might have the same reaction to Cockroaches.
      - SilasX 9y ago
        >Well know I feel like a bit like an asshole with how abrasive my response was, sorry. Kudos to you for not escalating. I didn't feel it was abrasive at all. For my part, I'm just upset that I went to such great lengths (in the comment I linked) to unpack where the bikeshed metaphor does or doesn't apply, disentangling the various issues and merging them into a general understanding, right where that comment was needed, and yet that's the one that no one is responding to... (what's worse, it was downvoted less than a minute after I posted it ). >In response to your escalated names like PubesDB... my opinion is that I agree I wouldn't work with them, not because of any internal disgust reaction, but because the name signals a level of maturity that I don't want in my stack. Some people might have the same reaction to Cockroaches. Right, like I said, "we're haggling over the details"; it should be regarded as a question of which names are so disgusting to be out of the question, yet people are dismissing the entire naming issue as "lol emotional primates".
- sandstrom 9y ago
  Mongo (similar to 'mongolism', another term for Down's syndrome) has done just fine, despite (or thanks to!) their name. There was similar criticism about their name in the early days, but it has waned as mongo has grown. This will too.
  - lovich 9y ago
    Wasn't mongo slang for humongous? Like Mongo from Blazing Saddles?
    - orthecreedence 9y ago
      In the UK "mongo" is synonymous with "retard" if I'm remembering correctly.
    - zerg2k 9y ago
      In Spanish it is also a synonym for retard
    - zerg2k 9y ago
      In Spanish it is also a synonym for retard
rgacote 9y ago
Much better to name it something like Oracle, after a mythical seer who gives cryptic, self-contradictory answers open to wild interpretation.
- disconnected 9y ago
  Well, since this discussion has already gone down the tubes, we might as well spend some productive time making fun of other DB names: - SQLite: SQL database with no sugar. Less calories! - MySQL: A selfish database. - IMB DB2: Released in 1983, but never got promoted to DB3. Probably abandoned software? - Postgresql: Gesundheit! - CouchDB: A database for lazy people. Part of the NOSQL family, the Zen database family, that achieve SQL by not achieving SQL... like I said, lazy. - Microsoft Access: It's very accessible. Ironically, most people that use Office don't know what it is, or that it exists, and thus, don't use it. - dBase: De-bases your data. - Sybase: Pronounced sigh base, which is the sound people make when you suggest it.
  - ygaf 9y ago
    SQLite: they support a subset of SQL? unacceptable. MySQL: a proprietary product if ever I saw one. CouchDB: wow, does that hide bits of data until you search next week?
  - fs111 9y ago
    > - MySQL: A selfish database. MySQL is named after the founder's daughter "My". The fork is named after his other daughter "Maria": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius#Personal_life
    - disconnected 9y ago
      I didn't know this. My intention was never to offend, just to try (and apparently, fail) to be funny.
throwasehasdwi 9y ago
It's not trolling. It's a legitimate warning and they can choose to ignore the chorus to their own peril. The warnings get louder as they get more resistant to changing their name. Keeping the name for whatever reason IS going to cost them enterprise customers
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- oconnor663 9y ago
  There's a difference between "legitimate" and "useful". If the top comment on every CockroachDB post was "hey y'all remember that Go's maps aren't thread-safe", that would certainly be a legitimate warning. But at the same time, the CockroachDB team have been coding in Go for years, and they obviously already know that. If those top comments frequently turn into big threads arguing about whether Go's maps should have been thread-safe, the whole thing goes from being questionably useful to seriously annoying. Same thing's happening with the name. They know.
andkon 9y ago
So I do product marketing for a living, and have launched a whole wack of things with good and bad and boring names. The fact that CockroachDB is consistently on top of HN with each thing they do is pretty strong evidence that they're doing just fine with the name they have, and probably doing even better than if they had a milquetoast tech startup-esque name. Also, they know what their sales cycles look like. They hear feedback from actual customers. They have people whose job it is to notice any advantage they could have along the way. And yet! They're still selling stuff, they're at 1.0, and they're still alive — with the name they have.
- gonzofish 9y ago
  I think the fact that the name isn't milquetoast is a huge bonus. People are caught off guard by the name, which gets them thinking about it. I think the dismissal that business people won't look at it because of the name is purely opinion-based. But what do I know?
  - Fiahil 9y ago
    Zerg players will love the name. And there might be a small intersection, somewhere, between business people and Starcraft amateurs.
  - frankmcsherry 9y ago
    If the name were Milquetoast it would be awesome, because that was the cockroach from Bloom County. Or, was that the joke and I'm only just getting it late? ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_characters_in_Bloom_County#Milquetoast_the_Cockroach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_characters_in_Bloom_Coun...
- shepardrtc 9y ago
  Erlang posts are also consistently at the top of HN.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
draw_down 9y ago
I haven't really seen that many comments about the name, though? So now the top thread is about how terrible HN is for bikeshedding instead of talking about the actual topic... except this top thread is also not talking about the actual topic. Worth considering, imo.
yellowapple 9y ago
What's even wrong with the name anyway? It's certainly a lot better than the ridiculous ones like "PostgreSQL" and "MongoDB" and "Redis" (what do these words even mean?).
dang 9y ago
> Can we please stop bike shedding Unfortunately this is a version of the thing it's trying to stop, as is plain from the below. These balls of mud are immune to negation; they laugh at it and grow stronger.

SilasX 9y ago

It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Most people -- i.e. in procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to -- don't want anything to do with cockroaches. The idea disgusts them at a gut level, not something you can talk away. HN users are giving vital advice, for free. Those who ignore it will have only themselves to blame. As I say every time this comes up, would you be so dismissive about critics of naming a product PubesDB? Or GonorrheaDB? Or [n-word]DB? Then you agree that disgust-invoking connotations of the name matter, and we're just haggling over the details. Ubuntu, Mongo, Swagger (edit: Hadoop also) ... they're weird, sure, but they don't evoke the visceral feeling of disgust that cockroaches do.

networked 9y ago
On the other hand, if I heard of a database called "CockroachDB" gaining ever-greater adoption, I'd pay close attention to it because it was clearly succeeding despite a marketing handicap.
thraway2016 9y ago
procurement, management, finance, and others you need to appeal to They don't need to appeal to any of these suits. Just the technical decision-makers, whose express job it is to choose solutions on their technical merits, not their spurious emotional reactions.
- siculars 9y ago
  You can't possibly think that's true. If you do you can't have had much experience in buying or selling technology.
  - thraway2016 9y ago
    Selling, no. Buying, definitely. And names don't influence my decisions. A rose by any other name...
- iamNumber4 9y ago
  There is a sad fact though is that there are many organizations do not have technical people at the decision making level. So these Suits you speak of, won't be able to get past the product name, enough to hear any technical merits of why this technology should ever be considered. Due to disfunctional leadership not even having a role of Chief Technical officer, or Chief Informational officer at the senior leadership level. A lot outsource because they don't want to hire/pay for this in house. It also shifts responsibility away, giving the CEO,COO,CFO, etc... the ability to point fingers at an outside entity. That is a double whammy! internal can't sell/justify it to management, and outside IT providers/contractors can't sell it either. So while they may be surviving with the current name they have, that does not mean they wouldn't be crushing the market share with a different name. If they are getting negative comments about the product name, then that's a warning that they should do market research to find out how many people would avoid the product because of the name. But what the hell do I know, I'm making yet another HN comment post.
branchless 9y ago
Just finished my code, I'll commit with git.
xanderjanz 9y ago
That's just like your opinion man. Maybe they will love it. Having a name that stands out is generally good marketing actually.
H1Supreme 9y ago
> PubesDB Oh man, that's too much. lolol
- nebabyte 9y ago
  "The DB system designed to handle crazy (sometimes even tangly!) growth. No matter how hairy your data is, Pubes can handle it!"
genkaos 9y ago
Mongo is a derogatory term in spanish. But hey! not english so no problem.
- SilasX 9y ago
  "Deragatory" isn't the problem; the issue is whether it invokes visceral feelings of disgust. Many terms can be used as an insult, but are still tolerable as a name because a) they have non-insulting usages, and b) the emotional response does not rise to the level of "visceral disgust". The Spanish Wikipedia suggests many usages of the term "mongo", which probably wouldn't persist if the term was so repulsive: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongo https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongo
  - genkaos 9y ago
    I'm a spaniard and mongo is an insult. [removed unnecessary snarky comment]
    - networked 9y ago
      I think SilasX is not suggesting that it isn't a insult, but rather that a word being an insult is not what really matters as far as naming is concerned. What matters, according to him, is whether the word automatically elicits a strong negative emotional reaction. That a lot of words that elicit such a reaction are used as insults is mostly incidental to the argument.
      - genkaos 9y ago
        If calling your product RetardedDB or MentallyChallengedDB in a professional setting is OK by his standards because it's not spelled in english, then I'm OK with that. That's what mongo means in spanish, btw.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      Okay, there are separate issues going on here; let me try to clarify: Is "mongo" the equivalent of English "retard", in terms of being a low-class insult that invokes a visceral reaction among the majority of the population? I didn't believe that at first; if so, why didn't anyone ever put it in Wikipedia? English has "retard" (in the pejorative sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard#Other_uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retard#Other_uses And why doesn't it show up in a top-result Spanish dictionary? http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/mongo http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/mongo If it's merely an insult with numerous other meanings, I don't think it's comparable. But let's assume it is equivalent to "retard". In that case, I would agree that it shouldn't be used as a name. But you have to pick your battles: all words will have that trait in some language. For my part, I would consider the Spanish-speaking market big enough not to expect them to buy [the equivalent of] RetardDB. So I agree there. Edit: I agree with the sibling commenter networked's points.
codehusker 9y ago
> It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color will actually have concrete effects on adoption. Not taking a stance either way on the name, but that is the definition of bike-shedding (aka law of triviality). A committee won't vote for my nuclear plant because the bike shed is red. The bike shed's color has concrete effects on adoption. EDIT: I would just like to acknowledge the irony of bike-shedding bike-shedding.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Alright, if you really want to unpack the metaphor: The bikeshed story is to illustrate overemphasis on something that is trivial. It uses the example of a bikeshed color and a committee wanting to spend a lot of time on it because a) they care a little about it, and b) they understand it well enough for hard-headed members to wade into the dispute rather than trust experts. It's a failure mode -- by stipulation -- because the bikeshed color doesn't matter beyond minor (but real) aesthetic feelings among the committee, that are far outweighed the cost of high-level personnel devoting time to it. Had they been aware of the general dynamic of these thing, they could entirely prevent the loss by moving on; it's purely an internal matter. The bikeshed model ceases to demonstrate a failure mode if and when the bikeshed color has impacts far beyond things under the control of the committee. For example, if the majority of the world's people had a near-religious devotion to destroying facilities that house a blue bikeshed, and that fanaticism was hard to defend against, this would be a valid reason not to make the bikeshed blue, and would warrant the committee's attention. I summarize such situations as "that's not bikeshedding", though of course, to be more technically correct, I should say "that situation does not illustrate the avoidable failure mode in the parable of the bikeshed". Similarly, if adoption matters for more than just that committee -- if they need to convince numerous other committees to adopt the design -- it's likewise "not bikeshedding" because the first committee doesn't have control over all the other ones; with respect to the first, it's an external matter, and they can't stem the loss just by saying "hey, this is trivial". Now, you are correct that, a high enough level, this could work as a bikeshedding example, if you could simultaneously get the entire world to collectively agree on the non-importance of aesthetics on technical matters, and on what counts as technical vs aesthetic. Then the world could play the role of that first committee and say "wow, this is trivial" and it's done. But if that were actually feasible, then that should be your product (producing universal agreement on matters where you have a logical proof-of-correctness), not a database!
btilly 9y ago
"CockroachDB..your data will survive." It is both a negative reaction and is memorable. It is not clear which wins, and it isn't your job to decide. Yes, you have an opinion but you may not be right. I remember in the mid-2000s thinking that a particular politician couldn't possibly succeed with a Muslim sounding name. Turns out that a lot of people thought that. Yet Barack Hussein Obama managed to become President. Your opinion has definitely been registered. Continuing to state it has no value.
robbiemitchell 9y ago
> It's not bikeshedding when the bikeshed's color Still seems like bikeshedding. It's not your company. You're (probably) not an equity holder. Have you personally been harmed by the name because your company wouldn't let you adopt it in spite of its technical merits? Are you worried it won't succeed because of the name and thus are fighting on the company's behalf for its survival? > Most people ... and others you need to appeal to ... don't want anything to do with cockroaches You're making so much of this up out of thin air. > giving vital advice, for free > As I say every time this comes up As the parent said, the staff have already seen these messages. They have decided to keep the name. Advice is helpful, but once the decision is made, it's not. Let it go.
rubyn00bie 9y ago
Not to be an ass but... It so far appears not to be hurting them. In the slightest. This "warning" comes from the HN crowd every time something is posted about CockroachDB. I think it's time to LET IT GO. I for one, completely disagree with you but that's because I have a different understanding of the relationship between the business side and engineering. We are already looked at as eccentric and strange people, rarely if ever has an absurd technology name caused issue. Someone talking about "cockroach" is equivalent to talking about "unicorns" or "git." Its considerably less offensive than talk of "masters" and "slaves." If you think this is such a problem for you, then work on your salesmanship as I wouldn't hesitate to talk to other departments or investors about this product. I was a CTO up until I took medical leave this past October and I cannot stress how important salesmanship is to the role. I think your examples of other databases are hyperbole and not the point. You want them to be equivalent but they aren't. This comes down to what you can sell in your organization and if there is merit to it, then selling it should not be a problem. One last point is other departments don't give a shit what the database technology is called unless it's something to put on their CV. Just call it the "database" as they most certainly will.
- mburst 9y ago
  > It so far appears not to be hurting them. In the slightest. I feel like that is tough to judge because the public has only known them by one name as far as I know. If they switched to this name from another name and saw no difference then we could surmise that the name has had no affect.
  - rubyn00bie 9y ago
    I disagree that it's tough to judge but that's because they've raised a considerable amount of capital ($53 million over three rounds): https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cockroach-labs#/entity https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cockroach-labs#/enti...
    - eridius 9y ago
      The end goal of a company is not to raise venture funding. So you cannot use "they raised capital" as proof that their name isn't a problem. Their name absolutely will hurt their adoption. Maybe the product is good enough that they'll still be successful, but if so, you would expect them to be even more successful if they didn't have such an off-putting name.
EnFinlay 9y ago
When people are bike shedding, they aren't doing it to waste time, they think that they are adding value because of `list of bad results of wrong colour here`. So here's my question to you: could you be wrong about this having "concrete effects on adoption"? And if you are wrong, is this just bike shedding? And to continue the bike shed metaphor, it's about people ignoring nuclear power plant design whose worst case scenario is nuclear meltdown. For CockroachDB 1.0, what's the equivalent, data loss? So are you discussing something technically trivial (colour is easy to understand) over the design (technically complex) that would prevent data loss? If the answer is yes, aren't you bike shedding like a champion? tl;dr Bike shedders don't know they're bike shedding and think the discussion is very important.
- SilasX 9y ago
  I elaborated in much (probably too much) greater detail on the relevance of the bikeshedding metaphor here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310444 I would appreciate your thoughts. With respect to your specific point: if we could resolve how much it matters, then yes, that would obviate the debate. But the bikeshedding metaphor doesn't add much there because it's precisely in dispute about how much it matters.
  - EnFinlay 9y ago
    Well know I feel like a bit like an asshole with how abrasive my response was, sorry. Kudos to you for not escalating. I agree that it resolves to how much it matters, and I guess I disagree with you on how much it matters. How it relates to the bike shedding metaphor is starting to feel like a semantic argument, which is not something I want to continue. In response to your escalated names like PubesDB... my opinion is that I agree I wouldn't work with them, not because of any internal disgust reaction, but because the name signals a level of maturity that I don't want in my stack. Some people might have the same reaction to Cockroaches.
    - SilasX 9y ago
      >Well know I feel like a bit like an asshole with how abrasive my response was, sorry. Kudos to you for not escalating. I didn't feel it was abrasive at all. For my part, I'm just upset that I went to such great lengths (in the comment I linked) to unpack where the bikeshed metaphor does or doesn't apply, disentangling the various issues and merging them into a general understanding, right where that comment was needed, and yet that's the one that no one is responding to... (what's worse, it was downvoted less than a minute after I posted it ). >In response to your escalated names like PubesDB... my opinion is that I agree I wouldn't work with them, not because of any internal disgust reaction, but because the name signals a level of maturity that I don't want in my stack. Some people might have the same reaction to Cockroaches. Right, like I said, "we're haggling over the details"; it should be regarded as a question of which names are so disgusting to be out of the question, yet people are dismissing the entire naming issue as "lol emotional primates".
sandstrom 9y ago
Mongo (similar to 'mongolism', another term for Down's syndrome) has done just fine, despite (or thanks to!) their name. There was similar criticism about their name in the early days, but it has waned as mongo has grown. This will too.
- lovich 9y ago
  Wasn't mongo slang for humongous? Like Mongo from Blazing Saddles?
  - orthecreedence 9y ago
    In the UK "mongo" is synonymous with "retard" if I'm remembering correctly.
  - zerg2k 9y ago
    In Spanish it is also a synonym for retard
  - zerg2k 9y ago
    In Spanish it is also a synonym for retard

rgacote 9y ago

Much better to name it something like Oracle, after a mythical seer who gives cryptic, self-contradictory answers open to wild interpretation.

disconnected 9y ago
Well, since this discussion has already gone down the tubes, we might as well spend some productive time making fun of other DB names: - SQLite: SQL database with no sugar. Less calories! - MySQL: A selfish database. - IMB DB2: Released in 1983, but never got promoted to DB3. Probably abandoned software? - Postgresql: Gesundheit! - CouchDB: A database for lazy people. Part of the NOSQL family, the Zen database family, that achieve SQL by not achieving SQL... like I said, lazy. - Microsoft Access: It's very accessible. Ironically, most people that use Office don't know what it is, or that it exists, and thus, don't use it. - dBase: De-bases your data. - Sybase: Pronounced sigh base, which is the sound people make when you suggest it.
- ygaf 9y ago
  SQLite: they support a subset of SQL? unacceptable. MySQL: a proprietary product if ever I saw one. CouchDB: wow, does that hide bits of data until you search next week?
- fs111 9y ago
  > - MySQL: A selfish database. MySQL is named after the founder's daughter "My". The fork is named after his other daughter "Maria": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius#Personal_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Widenius#Personal_life
  - disconnected 9y ago
    I didn't know this. My intention was never to offend, just to try (and apparently, fail) to be funny.

throwasehasdwi 9y ago

It's not trolling. It's a legitimate warning and they can choose to ignore the chorus to their own peril. The warnings get louder as they get more resistant to changing their name. Keeping the name for whatever reason IS going to cost them enterprise customers

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
oconnor663 9y ago
There's a difference between "legitimate" and "useful". If the top comment on every CockroachDB post was "hey y'all remember that Go's maps aren't thread-safe", that would certainly be a legitimate warning. But at the same time, the CockroachDB team have been coding in Go for years, and they obviously already know that. If those top comments frequently turn into big threads arguing about whether Go's maps should have been thread-safe, the whole thing goes from being questionably useful to seriously annoying. Same thing's happening with the name. They know.

andkon 9y ago

So I do product marketing for a living, and have launched a whole wack of things with good and bad and boring names. The fact that CockroachDB is consistently on top of HN with each thing they do is pretty strong evidence that they're doing just fine with the name they have, and probably doing even better than if they had a milquetoast tech startup-esque name. Also, they know what their sales cycles look like. They hear feedback from actual customers. They have people whose job it is to notice any advantage they could have along the way. And yet! They're still selling stuff, they're at 1.0, and they're still alive — with the name they have.

gonzofish 9y ago
I think the fact that the name isn't milquetoast is a huge bonus. People are caught off guard by the name, which gets them thinking about it. I think the dismissal that business people won't look at it because of the name is purely opinion-based. But what do I know?
- Fiahil 9y ago
  Zerg players will love the name. And there might be a small intersection, somewhere, between business people and Starcraft amateurs.
- frankmcsherry 9y ago
  If the name were Milquetoast it would be awesome, because that was the cockroach from Bloom County. Or, was that the joke and I'm only just getting it late? ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_characters_in_Bloom_County#Milquetoast_the_Cockroach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_characters_in_Bloom_Coun...
shepardrtc 9y ago
Erlang posts are also consistently at the top of HN.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

draw_down 9y ago

I haven't really seen that many comments about the name, though? So now the top thread is about how terrible HN is for bikeshedding instead of talking about the actual topic... except this top thread is also not talking about the actual topic. Worth considering, imo.

yellowapple 9y ago

What's even wrong with the name anyway? It's certainly a lot better than the ridiculous ones like "PostgreSQL" and "MongoDB" and "Redis" (what do these words even mean?).

dang 9y ago

> Can we please stop bike shedding Unfortunately this is a version of the thing it's trying to stop, as is plain from the below. These balls of mud are immune to negation; they laugh at it and grow stronger.