5 ms·

You don’t even need to read past the product name. Like a lot of geeks they just don’t have a clue how to sell, nor how to hire talent that can. There is no par

by _8ljf 7y ago

You don’t even need to read past the product name. Like a lot of geeks they just don’t have a clue how to sell, nor how to hire talent that can. There is no part of their branding that is not a straight disaster. (And that shoulder massage…oy.) Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe, and I take my hat off to them for what they do. But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms? (Outside of the programmers-who-already-happily-self-identify-as-bronies subset, of course.) Doubly so when the actual product looks as agile and graceful as a household broom. Triply so when they can’t even do simple web pages right. (Just try the inline links on the Community page.) Or try the learn-by-example page, which spends seconds looking completely blank until some pointless Web 2.0 crap eventually loads in a perfectly static TOC. I mean, I was prepared to overlook the marketing catastrophe just to read about their much vaunted take on structural typing (which is highly relevant to my interests), but this simple lack of technical competence means I am not going to waste any more time. Money says the whole thing immediately sinks without trace, and none involved will ever be any the wiser why. What a pointless waste of effort.

Guthur 7y ago
You see a shoulder massage, I see someone giving support to and obviously nervous programmer :) Granted though I can't see where the name is coming from.
- zeeza 7y ago
  I read somewhere that the name originates from the graceful and seamless movements you see in a Ballet recital. The seamless integration and interactions of components in a distributed system is likened to that of a Ballet troupe.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Yeah, just seems like maternal guidance to me. People nitpicking the gender of the programmer in a cartoon here is a great example of what I despise about modern tech discourse. The gender of the cartoon programmer isn't even that clear, it's so highly stylized. But I wonder if it was a woman giving another woman a massage instead, they'd be lambasted for pandering to the male fantasy of lesbianism.
  - carapace 7y ago
    Well I see a Leanan sídhe sucking some mysterious lifeforce out of the programmer while "stimulating certain areas of his brain". I don't know what to make of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Spac...
zeeza 7y ago
I think Ballerina is a rather catchy name, to each his own I guess
- minraws 7y ago
  Catchy doesn't mean marketable or hospitable. You don't/won't go out saying you love Ballerina. :P The problem is that you should not use a widely used word for the name of your product/software/tools. It's hard for everyone who tries to get involved. A good name IMO is Typescript if you want to compare.
  - naikrovek 7y ago
    > You don't/won't go out saying you love Ballerina. Why not? What is wrong with "Ballerina"? If it's too feminine for you, that's a problem with you, and not the name.
    - asynch8 7y ago
      To be fair, even though I don't at all agree that it is necessarily an issue, what he saids could be an issue for the other insecure brogrammers out there since it obviously is for him already
minraws 7y ago
Couldn't even get the Examples page to open properly after 10minutes of wait on my phone... =D
- Fellshard 7y ago
  On the upside, if it /does/ load, it's one of the stronger layouts for examples, well-annotated to introduce the concepts being explored, and not just slapping you in the face with a bunch of novel code you would struggle to interpret.
deckar01 7y ago
> how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” Ballerina -> Baller. Problem solved.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes Yes. > who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe For the most part, no, though if both parties have to try to stand one toe during the exercise, maybe. > But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms? Uh, I don't usually identify, or want to identify, as name of tool when doing any of those things, whether the tool is Python, Ruby, C#, Docker, etc. Why would my lack of desire to do so when the tool is Ballerina be differentiating? Identifying as user-of-toolname is different than identifying as toolname (and I actually prefer to minimize the former, too: when I'm dancing—contemporary or, less often these days, ballroom/swing, not classical ballet—I don't identify as a user of a particular brand of shoe, either.)
- TheDong 7y ago
  Regarding the identity thing: programmers like collective nouns. What do you call a bunch of google employees? Googlers (and they self-identify with that label). The same thing goes for a bunch of companies. What do you call the people at a go meetup? Gophers. Ruby meetup? Rubyists. There's a bunch of collective nouns. In the software community, they particularly pop up around companies we belong to, and programming languages we use. It's about 50/50 with programming languages really. A bunch of C programmers isn't a "Unit of Eunuchs", but a bunch of python programmers are a "Plethora of Pythonists". Rust programmers are a "Corrosion of Rustaceans, but java programmers aren't an "Orientation of Objects". Collective nouns are somewhat random, but I assure you that when the programming language name makes it easy to create them, they will be created. Ballerina makes it very easy any of a number of collective nouns to form, and they totally would if the language took off.

by _8ljf 7y ago

Guthur 7y ago

You see a shoulder massage, I see someone giving support to and obviously nervous programmer :) Granted though I can't see where the name is coming from.

zeeza 7y ago
I read somewhere that the name originates from the graceful and seamless movements you see in a Ballet recital. The seamless integration and interactions of components in a distributed system is likened to that of a Ballet troupe.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Yeah, just seems like maternal guidance to me. People nitpicking the gender of the programmer in a cartoon here is a great example of what I despise about modern tech discourse. The gender of the cartoon programmer isn't even that clear, it's so highly stylized. But I wonder if it was a woman giving another woman a massage instead, they'd be lambasted for pandering to the male fantasy of lesbianism.
- carapace 7y ago
  Well I see a Leanan sídhe sucking some mysterious lifeforce out of the programmer while "stimulating certain areas of his brain". I don't know what to make of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muse_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Spac...

zeeza 7y ago

I think Ballerina is a rather catchy name, to each his own I guess

minraws 7y ago
Catchy doesn't mean marketable or hospitable. You don't/won't go out saying you love Ballerina. :P The problem is that you should not use a widely used word for the name of your product/software/tools. It's hard for everyone who tries to get involved. A good name IMO is Typescript if you want to compare.
- naikrovek 7y ago
  > You don't/won't go out saying you love Ballerina. Why not? What is wrong with "Ballerina"? If it's too feminine for you, that's a problem with you, and not the name.
  - asynch8 7y ago
    To be fair, even though I don't at all agree that it is necessarily an issue, what he saids could be an issue for the other insecure brogrammers out there since it obviously is for him already

minraws 7y ago

Couldn't even get the Examples page to open properly after 10minutes of wait on my phone... =D

Fellshard 7y ago
On the upside, if it /does/ load, it's one of the stronger layouts for examples, well-annotated to introduce the concepts being explored, and not just slapping you in the face with a bunch of novel code you would struggle to interpret.

deckar01 7y ago

> how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” Ballerina -> Baller. Problem solved.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Look, real ballerinas are totally hardcore badass atheletes Yes. > who could easily kick all our flabby nerd asses while standing on one toe For the most part, no, though if both parties have to try to stand one toe during the exercise, maybe. > But how many professional software developers will really want to self-identify as “ballerinas” when discussing between themselves, never mind pitching to board rooms? Uh, I don't usually identify, or want to identify, as name of tool when doing any of those things, whether the tool is Python, Ruby, C#, Docker, etc. Why would my lack of desire to do so when the tool is Ballerina be differentiating? Identifying as user-of-toolname is different than identifying as toolname (and I actually prefer to minimize the former, too: when I'm dancing—contemporary or, less often these days, ballroom/swing, not classical ballet—I don't identify as a user of a particular brand of shoe, either.)

TheDong 7y ago
Regarding the identity thing: programmers like collective nouns. What do you call a bunch of google employees? Googlers (and they self-identify with that label). The same thing goes for a bunch of companies. What do you call the people at a go meetup? Gophers. Ruby meetup? Rubyists. There's a bunch of collective nouns. In the software community, they particularly pop up around companies we belong to, and programming languages we use. It's about 50/50 with programming languages really. A bunch of C programmers isn't a "Unit of Eunuchs", but a bunch of python programmers are a "Plethora of Pythonists". Rust programmers are a "Corrosion of Rustaceans, but java programmers aren't an "Orientation of Objects". Collective nouns are somewhat random, but I assure you that when the programming language name makes it easy to create them, they will be created. Ballerina makes it very easy any of a number of collective nouns to form, and they totally would if the language took off.