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You're saying the fact that Stephen Wolfram comes off as a narcissist is unrelated to the fact that he names everything after himself? Python isn't called "the
by OskarS 7y ago
You're saying the fact that Stephen Wolfram comes off as a narcissist is unrelated to the fact that he names everything after himself?
Python isn't called "the van Rossum Language". C isn't called "the Ritchie Language" (or "the Bell language", for that matter). Lisp isn't called the "the McCarthy language". We should judge Wolfram Research's products in spite of their unfortunate names, but denying that they're the result of Wolfram's narcissism is silly at this point.
- saagarjha 7y agoPeople name companies after themselves, and then they name their flagship product after the company–it's not that strange. (To be fair, in this case I would not be surprised if he named the company after himself, and then the language after himself, too. It's just that it's not relevant to keep bringing this up when it's not necessarily a strange practice.)
- catalogia 7y agoHalf of the "Debian" name comes from Ian Murdock's first name. The other half comes from his then-girlfriend's name 'Debra'. I've never heard anybody castigate Ian/Debian for that. Somebody naming something after themself seems a little tacky to me, but I don't think it's anything to get bent out of shape about.
- mplewis 7y agoProbably because Ian doesn't try to commercialize and push a proprietary system of computing on the world with Ian plastered everywhere you can see.
- kazinator 7y agoWolfram is also recognizable as the Tungsten element (W). Lots of projects are named after elements.