3 ms·

What the hell is a “funk”? I’m getting tired of people making up ad-hoc cutesy names for no reason whatsoever. E.g. why do we call Rust packages “crates”?

steveklabnik 8y ago
Technically, rust’s packages are called packages, and they’re made up of one or more crates. “Compilation unit” just doesn’t roll off the tounge the same way as “crate.” (And “funk” is how many pronounce “func” as in “function”, they’re using the short name to reinforce the tool’s name. That’s not “no reason.”)
- dymk 8y ago
  But a lot of people already know what a "compilation unit" is, or have heard of it, or have some intuition for what it means. So why make up a new word for it? "Rolls off the tongue" is at best an "eh" reason, at worst just an opinion about how a word sounds to some people, which isn't a very strong argument for coming up with new words.
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Naming things is a classically hard problem in our field. There’s always room to improve.
    - dymk 8y ago
      So why is "crate" such an improvement over "compilation unit" that it warrants inventing a new term? Especially when a large number of engineers learning Rust come from a language that uses "compilation unit"?
      - yesenadam 8y ago
        Well, it's 1 syllable instead of 6.
      - steveklabnik 8y ago
        More come from those that don’t than those that do, these days. Conciseness is a virtue. Additionally, “compilation unit” can also be misleading; for example, incremental recompilation compiles just a portion of a compilation unit, so it’s not really a unit anymore.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    It's a stronger argument than I’m getting tired of...
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  See, “compilation unit” tells the uninitiated reader many things: it’s something that gets compiled or at least has to do something with compilation. And it’s a “unit”, so it’s probably a chunk of source code that gets compiled together. It brings to mind analogous concepts from other languages/ecosystems so we can place it somewhere in our mental model from the outset. On the other hand “crate” tells you nothing at all.
alanbernstein 8y ago
When Mozilla Firefox was new, a friend told me she wouldn't use it, because the name sounded like it was invented by a five year old boy. "Internet Explorer" was a much more sensible name, she said. I disagree with her about that, but not sure where I stand on your argument.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Well, Firefox is sensible compared to Iceweasel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project#Iceweasel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_r...
Myrmornis 8y ago
This person's project is called "funky" and it involves a new approach to creating shell functions. It doesn't take great linguistic genius to intuit what a "funk" might be.
Arnavion 8y ago
>E.g. why do we call Rust packages “crates”? This is off-topic, but I was curious enough to go looking. It seems there has been a thing called a "crate" ever since the first commit in Graydon's personal repo [1], though I'm not sure it had the same meaning as it does now. [1] https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/commit/b0fd440798ab3cfb05c60a1a1bd2894e1618479e#diff-dbf56c8072709f1dd318bf55b598e255R7 https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/commit/b0fd440798...
thomastjeffery 8y ago
Well, it's a shell. PATH is a global namespace. We probably shouldn't just go making ambiguous binary names to be used by a shell. Granted, that is just a weakness of shell design.

steveklabnik 8y ago

Technically, rust’s packages are called packages, and they’re made up of one or more crates. “Compilation unit” just doesn’t roll off the tounge the same way as “crate.” (And “funk” is how many pronounce “func” as in “function”, they’re using the short name to reinforce the tool’s name. That’s not “no reason.”)

dymk 8y ago
But a lot of people already know what a "compilation unit" is, or have heard of it, or have some intuition for what it means. So why make up a new word for it? "Rolls off the tongue" is at best an "eh" reason, at worst just an opinion about how a word sounds to some people, which isn't a very strong argument for coming up with new words.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Naming things is a classically hard problem in our field. There’s always room to improve.
  - dymk 8y ago
    So why is "crate" such an improvement over "compilation unit" that it warrants inventing a new term? Especially when a large number of engineers learning Rust come from a language that uses "compilation unit"?
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Well, it's 1 syllable instead of 6.
    - steveklabnik 8y ago
      More come from those that don’t than those that do, these days. Conciseness is a virtue. Additionally, “compilation unit” can also be misleading; for example, incremental recompilation compiles just a portion of a compilation unit, so it’s not really a unit anymore.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  It's a stronger argument than I’m getting tired of...
aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
See, “compilation unit” tells the uninitiated reader many things: it’s something that gets compiled or at least has to do something with compilation. And it’s a “unit”, so it’s probably a chunk of source code that gets compiled together. It brings to mind analogous concepts from other languages/ecosystems so we can place it somewhere in our mental model from the outset. On the other hand “crate” tells you nothing at all.

alanbernstein 8y ago

When Mozilla Firefox was new, a friend told me she wouldn't use it, because the name sounded like it was invented by a five year old boy. "Internet Explorer" was a much more sensible name, she said. I disagree with her about that, but not sure where I stand on your argument.

yesenadam 8y ago
Well, Firefox is sensible compared to Iceweasel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project#Iceweasel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_r...

Myrmornis 8y ago

This person's project is called "funky" and it involves a new approach to creating shell functions. It doesn't take great linguistic genius to intuit what a "funk" might be.

Arnavion 8y ago

>E.g. why do we call Rust packages “crates”? This is off-topic, but I was curious enough to go looking. It seems there has been a thing called a "crate" ever since the first commit in Graydon's personal repo [1], though I'm not sure it had the same meaning as it does now. [1] https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/commit/b0fd440798ab3cfb05c60a1a1bd2894e1618479e#diff-dbf56c8072709f1dd318bf55b598e255R7 https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/commit/b0fd440798...

thomastjeffery 8y ago

Well, it's a shell. PATH is a global namespace. We probably shouldn't just go making ambiguous binary names to be used by a shell. Granted, that is just a weakness of shell design.