4 ms·

So many letter combinations in the world and they went for "Nymph"Cast? Like Nympho (Nymphomaniac)?

by amoshi 7y ago

detaro 7y ago
Like "Nymphs", the nature spirits?
ipnon 7y ago
A nymph is a supernatural female diety in Greek mythology associated with air, water and wood.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Hehehe, you said "wood".
- thwave 7y ago
  It also just means "a young wife", or "a marriageable maiden" in ancient Greek.
hjek 7y ago
I think it's sweet naming a project after a supernatural being rather than a toxic heavy metal. Perhaps the sound of that name has less of a macho crunch and feels a bit unusual but couldn't that be a good thing?
DoreenMichele 7y ago
The author blurb: A girl who is trying to find her way through the confusion of giftedness, human societies and her intersexuality. Her life is somewhat of a dramatic survival show. She is currently working on her autobiography. To me, it mostly signals "A girl is working on this project and wants the name of it to signal that." If it were written by a guy and used a word that could be interpreted to mean "Studly," we probably wouldn't bat an eyelash. Many people likely wouldn't notice at all. Edit: https://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-chaser-810 https://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-chaser-810
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > If it were written by a guy and used a word that could be interpreted to mean "Studly," we probably wouldn't bat an eyelash 10 years ago in a forum like this, maybe; today, a third of the comments would be about the gender-exclusionary naming, and another third would be criticisms of first third, most of which would use the term “SJW”.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- war1025 7y ago
  FYI to anyone wanting to dive down into the rabbit hole, the author has over a decade of blog posts. An interesting person to say the least. Note that she is intersex, the main focus of much of the at least earlier blog posts that I've looked through.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    My feeling is that most women would like to normalize "I identify with girly things because I'm a girl and I'm sick to death of being required to neutralize my language -- which often means make it male coded -- to be seen as serious and professional." I'm 54 years old. I'm not as pretty as I used to be. I spent years believing I was sexually harassed because I was beautiful and feeling trapped because society also signals that being beautiful is required for a woman to be allowed to set foot outside. I keep waiting to be old and ugly enough for men to take me seriously and stop acting like my gender and whether or not they would hit that is the entire question in their mind for how to relate to me. I've concluded that just being female is all it takes for far too many men to act like I'm nothing but a sex object. That beauty thing was straight up a lie I was being told. She likely wants her more personal blog posts to remain available as support for others like her and an education opportunity for others. But it potentially goes bad places to focus on that element on an overwhelmingly male forum that normally talks about tech. Women are routinely enraged when their coding work or other work is essentially ignored so people can focus on her gender, how pretty she is, etc. I spoke up initially to try to suggest "She's probably just a girl sick to death of being told she needs to actively hide her gender and went with a name she identifies with and it would be nice if the world didn't make a big fucking deal out of that." That's perhaps putting out the fire with gasoline and just directing more attention to the detail of her gender. Unfortunately, I don't know enough code to talk about that and try to give that more focus. On the upside, at least this conversation is happening at the bottom of the page and isn't at the top.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Like Nympho (Nymphomaniac)? No, “nymph” like “nymph”, I would assume: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nymph https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nymph
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  I mean, even nymph means the nubile mythological nature spirit, often some sort of temptress, like Calypso. I asked my girlfriend what "nymphcast" sounded like to her and she agreed it seemed porn related. Of course, it's only HN sport to bikeshed the name. I can't resist.
  - hackkitten 7y ago
    I blame the education system for not teaching kids more about insects and their life cycles :)
    - bloak 7y ago
      We had a locust in a tank at the back of the science lab and had to draw diagrams of the nymphs. But that was a long time ago.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Well, it's less about there being other definitions and more about there being a most commonly used definition. But I've certainly belabored this thread to its miserable end. :P
simion314 7y ago
>Nymphomaniac You should have assumed that your vocabulary is limited and as many other words this is a composed words, before making a fool of yourself IMO you should google/DDG the words.
wongarsu 7y ago
A stereotypical nymphomaniac would be very casual and open (about sex), the name seems like a good fit for a "casual attempt at [an] open alternative to [a network device/protocol]". Unless you are rejecting it on puritan reasons, in which case I'll agree with the other commenters that there's a nonsexual interpretation too.
hackkitten 7y ago
No, 'nymph' as in 'dragonfly nymph', as in the part of an insect's life cycle, which is also the reason why I called it 'NymphRPC'. The idea being that these are frameworks that allow the grown-up application to emerge after development. (I'm the author of NymphCast/NymphRPC, etc.)
dang 7y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- amoshi 7y ago
  Good point, it's just that every now and then I come across some cool opensource projects with horrible names, which hinder their adoption and searchability, and overall seem to do them a great disservice. /e/ [0] comes to mind (took me a few minutes to find it! DDG didn't have it and Google had it way lower). [0] - https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/

So many letter combinations in the world and they went for "Nymph"Cast? Like Nympho (Nymphomaniac)?

by amoshi 7y ago

So many letter combinations in the world and they went for "Nymph"Cast? Like Nympho (Nymphomaniac)?

detaro 7y ago

Like "Nymphs", the nature spirits?

ipnon 7y ago

A nymph is a supernatural female diety in Greek mythology associated with air, water and wood.

jessaustin 7y ago
Hehehe, you said "wood".
thwave 7y ago
It also just means "a young wife", or "a marriageable maiden" in ancient Greek.

hjek 7y ago

I think it's sweet naming a project after a supernatural being rather than a toxic heavy metal. Perhaps the sound of that name has less of a macho crunch and feels a bit unusual but couldn't that be a good thing?

DoreenMichele 7y ago

The author blurb: A girl who is trying to find her way through the confusion of giftedness, human societies and her intersexuality. Her life is somewhat of a dramatic survival show. She is currently working on her autobiography. To me, it mostly signals "A girl is working on this project and wants the name of it to signal that." If it were written by a guy and used a word that could be interpreted to mean "Studly," we probably wouldn't bat an eyelash. Many people likely wouldn't notice at all. Edit: https://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-chaser-810 https://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-chaser-810

dragonwriter 7y ago
> If it were written by a guy and used a word that could be interpreted to mean "Studly," we probably wouldn't bat an eyelash 10 years ago in a forum like this, maybe; today, a third of the comments would be about the gender-exclusionary naming, and another third would be criticisms of first third, most of which would use the term “SJW”.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
war1025 7y ago
FYI to anyone wanting to dive down into the rabbit hole, the author has over a decade of blog posts. An interesting person to say the least. Note that she is intersex, the main focus of much of the at least earlier blog posts that I've looked through.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  My feeling is that most women would like to normalize "I identify with girly things because I'm a girl and I'm sick to death of being required to neutralize my language -- which often means make it male coded -- to be seen as serious and professional." I'm 54 years old. I'm not as pretty as I used to be. I spent years believing I was sexually harassed because I was beautiful and feeling trapped because society also signals that being beautiful is required for a woman to be allowed to set foot outside. I keep waiting to be old and ugly enough for men to take me seriously and stop acting like my gender and whether or not they would hit that is the entire question in their mind for how to relate to me. I've concluded that just being female is all it takes for far too many men to act like I'm nothing but a sex object. That beauty thing was straight up a lie I was being told. She likely wants her more personal blog posts to remain available as support for others like her and an education opportunity for others. But it potentially goes bad places to focus on that element on an overwhelmingly male forum that normally talks about tech. Women are routinely enraged when their coding work or other work is essentially ignored so people can focus on her gender, how pretty she is, etc. I spoke up initially to try to suggest "She's probably just a girl sick to death of being told she needs to actively hide her gender and went with a name she identifies with and it would be nice if the world didn't make a big fucking deal out of that." That's perhaps putting out the fire with gasoline and just directing more attention to the detail of her gender. Unfortunately, I don't know enough code to talk about that and try to give that more focus. On the upside, at least this conversation is happening at the bottom of the page and isn't at the top.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Like Nympho (Nymphomaniac)? No, “nymph” like “nymph”, I would assume: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nymph https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nymph

hombre_fatal 7y ago
I mean, even nymph means the nubile mythological nature spirit, often some sort of temptress, like Calypso. I asked my girlfriend what "nymphcast" sounded like to her and she agreed it seemed porn related. Of course, it's only HN sport to bikeshed the name. I can't resist.
- hackkitten 7y ago
  I blame the education system for not teaching kids more about insects and their life cycles :)
  - bloak 7y ago
    We had a locust in a tank at the back of the science lab and had to draw diagrams of the nymphs. But that was a long time ago.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Well, it's less about there being other definitions and more about there being a most commonly used definition. But I've certainly belabored this thread to its miserable end. :P

simion314 7y ago

>Nymphomaniac You should have assumed that your vocabulary is limited and as many other words this is a composed words, before making a fool of yourself IMO you should google/DDG the words.

wongarsu 7y ago

A stereotypical nymphomaniac would be very casual and open (about sex), the name seems like a good fit for a "casual attempt at [an] open alternative to [a network device/protocol]". Unless you are rejecting it on puritan reasons, in which case I'll agree with the other commenters that there's a nonsexual interpretation too.

hackkitten 7y ago

No, 'nymph' as in 'dragonfly nymph', as in the part of an insect's life cycle, which is also the reason why I called it 'NymphRPC'. The idea being that these are frameworks that allow the grown-up application to emerge after development. (I'm the author of NymphCast/NymphRPC, etc.)

dang 7y ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

amoshi 7y ago
Good point, it's just that every now and then I come across some cool opensource projects with horrible names, which hinder their adoption and searchability, and overall seem to do them a great disservice. /e/ [0] comes to mind (took me a few minutes to find it! DDG didn't have it and Google had it way lower). [0] - https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/