4 ms·

Naming matters. Nim changing from "Nimrod" matters. Cockroachdb's name is offputting. Perl 6's name has caused endless confusion and by itself sabotaged both Pe

by kbd 7y ago

Naming matters. Nim changing from "Nimrod" matters. Cockroachdb's name is offputting. Perl 6's name has caused endless confusion and by itself sabotaged both Perl 5 and Perl 6. Perl 6 has interesting ideas but I don't even want to touch it because its naming issue is so toxic. I'm glad they're going to rename it.

pvaldes 7y ago
Agree. To name another example, I personally can't take seriously anything named 'webinar'. Webinar is similar in spanish to the word huevina that means "egg beaters" (a replacement cheap and second quality). It sounds also like "web-vaina" (a vaina is "something" and specially used when something annoying happens) and has common roots with words like "huevín" (little testicle) and "huevada" (something irrelevant, lacking of any real interest and a total lose of time). Definitely looks like something created to be dismissed. I can't thing in a worst 'hype' word for replace (without any real need or reason) the perfectly neutral and good old term 'videoconference'. Webinar is the kind of term that Ned Flanders would use.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Agree. To name another example, I personally can't take seriously anything named 'webinar' Seeing that webinars have caught on like wildfire, become a multi-billion dollar business, and forced all kinds of eLearning and online platforms to say they offer the ability to produce/share "webinars", I'd say this is rather a counter-example. I.e. more like "A few might find X or Y name off-putting, some outliers might even come with contrived meanings in unrelated not-exactly homonyms in different languages that supposedly would make a name unsuitable, but in most cases nobody really cares".
  - exikyut 7y ago
    I agree with you and the GP. The execution, the thing, the multibillion dollar industry, are excellent, and the world would be worse for their nonexistence. The naming, on the other hand, is indeed a disaster. I too can't take it seriously, although I can't quite put my finger on why as well as the GP can. To me it just sounds like the "lite" version of something, but to the extreme where it might as well be the toy version. Yet another case of buzzword intolerance, it would seem.
philwelch 7y ago
“Nimrod” is a funny case. In the Bible, Nimrod is a king and a mighty hunter. In Looney Toons, Elmer Fudd, a decidedly not-mighty hunter, is sarcastically dubbed “Nimrod”, and so the connotation is reversed for those of us who are first exposed to the name as a sarcastic jibe from Bugs Bunny rather than the name of a Biblical figure.
coldtea 7y ago
>Naming matters Not that much. >Nim changing from "Nimrod" matters Hardly. >Cockroachdb's name is offputting. Not enough to matter. They still raised over $60 million in funding... Many people have internalized Marketing/SEO/enterprise-pointy-hair-boss thinking about "what matters", but in the grand scheme of things, naming is not really that relevant...
- Grinnz 7y ago
  To someone versed in both languages, no. Otherwise, the name giving official credence to assumptions that no longer hold is damaging to both.
anonytrary 7y ago
Is there a TLDR on what's wrong with the name "Perl 6" for those of us who have zero context?
- sundarurfriend 7y ago
  It was not a version upgrade from Perl5, but instead practically a new language with some similar design principles. So the name was both holding Raku back by associating it with the warts of Perl5, and also holding Perl5 back because people assumed "Perl 6 was the upgraded version so why use the old one". People have been talking for a long long time that the language is different enough to deserve a different name, and things finally seem to have come to a head recently. As a Perl 5 fan and an early ~Perl 6~Raku enthusiast, I'm happy about this change, though it's almost certainly coming too late. Better late than never, I guess.
- alexmint 7y ago
  Perl 6 sounds like a successor of Perl 5 but in reality it is a totally new language. Many long time Perl 5 users think a new name for a new language would have been better. The name Perl 6 was damaging to the popularity of Perl because beginners were confused whether they should learn Perl 5 or Perl 6. The same confusion existed in Python: Python 2 vs. Python 3 but the Python Wiki was always very clear. Until a certain point, it recommended Python 2 and after Python 3 became very popular, it recommended Python 3. That sort of clarity was missing in Perl. Due to the number of new programmers learning Perl decreased rapidly and finally Python overtook in popularity.
  - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
    Thid said, Python 2 vs 3 did not matter for a beginner. Beside print they would not see a difference. I started to use Python when 3 was taking off. Did some code on 2 for a few months, then just swapped the interpreter without any modification of the code (beside print). For advanced devs the story may be different.
- takeda 7y ago
  I believe the issue was that Perl 6 had too many changes that made it hard to convert apps from earlier version. That created some kind of limbo where people weren't sure if they should use perl 5 or perl 6 (”why develop in perl 5, when it is probably a dead end and perl 6 is the future” and at the same time "why should I convert to perl 6, what if it will be a failure and I wasted my time?") By renaming it, it revives Perl 5 so developent can continue, and at the same time Perl 6 is presented as a new language, now whichever wins will be based on its merit.

by kbd 7y ago

pvaldes 7y ago

Agree. To name another example, I personally can't take seriously anything named 'webinar'. Webinar is similar in spanish to the word huevina that means "egg beaters" (a replacement cheap and second quality). It sounds also like "web-vaina" (a vaina is "something" and specially used when something annoying happens) and has common roots with words like "huevín" (little testicle) and "huevada" (something irrelevant, lacking of any real interest and a total lose of time). Definitely looks like something created to be dismissed. I can't thing in a worst 'hype' word for replace (without any real need or reason) the perfectly neutral and good old term 'videoconference'. Webinar is the kind of term that Ned Flanders would use.

coldtea 7y ago
>Agree. To name another example, I personally can't take seriously anything named 'webinar' Seeing that webinars have caught on like wildfire, become a multi-billion dollar business, and forced all kinds of eLearning and online platforms to say they offer the ability to produce/share "webinars", I'd say this is rather a counter-example. I.e. more like "A few might find X or Y name off-putting, some outliers might even come with contrived meanings in unrelated not-exactly homonyms in different languages that supposedly would make a name unsuitable, but in most cases nobody really cares".
- exikyut 7y ago
  I agree with you and the GP. The execution, the thing, the multibillion dollar industry, are excellent, and the world would be worse for their nonexistence. The naming, on the other hand, is indeed a disaster. I too can't take it seriously, although I can't quite put my finger on why as well as the GP can. To me it just sounds like the "lite" version of something, but to the extreme where it might as well be the toy version. Yet another case of buzzword intolerance, it would seem.

philwelch 7y ago

“Nimrod” is a funny case. In the Bible, Nimrod is a king and a mighty hunter. In Looney Toons, Elmer Fudd, a decidedly not-mighty hunter, is sarcastically dubbed “Nimrod”, and so the connotation is reversed for those of us who are first exposed to the name as a sarcastic jibe from Bugs Bunny rather than the name of a Biblical figure.

coldtea 7y ago

>Naming matters Not that much. >Nim changing from "Nimrod" matters Hardly. >Cockroachdb's name is offputting. Not enough to matter. They still raised over $60 million in funding... Many people have internalized Marketing/SEO/enterprise-pointy-hair-boss thinking about "what matters", but in the grand scheme of things, naming is not really that relevant...

Grinnz 7y ago
To someone versed in both languages, no. Otherwise, the name giving official credence to assumptions that no longer hold is damaging to both.

anonytrary 7y ago

Is there a TLDR on what's wrong with the name "Perl 6" for those of us who have zero context?

sundarurfriend 7y ago
It was not a version upgrade from Perl5, but instead practically a new language with some similar design principles. So the name was both holding Raku back by associating it with the warts of Perl5, and also holding Perl5 back because people assumed "Perl 6 was the upgraded version so why use the old one". People have been talking for a long long time that the language is different enough to deserve a different name, and things finally seem to have come to a head recently. As a Perl 5 fan and an early ~Perl 6~Raku enthusiast, I'm happy about this change, though it's almost certainly coming too late. Better late than never, I guess.
alexmint 7y ago
Perl 6 sounds like a successor of Perl 5 but in reality it is a totally new language. Many long time Perl 5 users think a new name for a new language would have been better. The name Perl 6 was damaging to the popularity of Perl because beginners were confused whether they should learn Perl 5 or Perl 6. The same confusion existed in Python: Python 2 vs. Python 3 but the Python Wiki was always very clear. Until a certain point, it recommended Python 2 and after Python 3 became very popular, it recommended Python 3. That sort of clarity was missing in Perl. Due to the number of new programmers learning Perl decreased rapidly and finally Python overtook in popularity.
- BrandoElFollito 7y ago
  Thid said, Python 2 vs 3 did not matter for a beginner. Beside print they would not see a difference. I started to use Python when 3 was taking off. Did some code on 2 for a few months, then just swapped the interpreter without any modification of the code (beside print). For advanced devs the story may be different.
takeda 7y ago
I believe the issue was that Perl 6 had too many changes that made it hard to convert apps from earlier version. That created some kind of limbo where people weren't sure if they should use perl 5 or perl 6 (”why develop in perl 5, when it is probably a dead end and perl 6 is the future” and at the same time "why should I convert to perl 6, what if it will be a failure and I wasted my time?") By renaming it, it revives Perl 5 so developent can continue, and at the same time Perl 6 is presented as a new language, now whichever wins will be based on its merit.