6 ms·

Maybe a dumb complaint, but I hate the name. I have a really hard time not reading it as the active name "Generate Server". Like, I'd expect it to be a function

Maybe a dumb complaint, but I hate the name. I have a really hard time not reading it as the active name "Generate Server". Like, I'd expect it to be a function that generates servers (whatever that means, since what it's dealing with isn't something I'd normally call "a server" either). It bugs the hell out of me every time I read Elixir code. One of those things I have to keep reminding myself: "OK, it's not what it looks like it is, at all... what did these misleading terms actually mean, again?"

pessimizer 5y ago
Is "general" or "generic" more misleading than "generate"?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
brobinson 5y ago
It's "generic" server: http://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html http://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html
- hinkley 5y ago
  The sooner you start smacking people with tribal knowledge, the sooner many people start to back away slowly. I used to interview ex-coworkers. I don't do it as much anymore because it gets old/depressing and the answers tend not to change that much. If, for the purposes of thinking about turnover, you look at a former colleague as an 'aggrieved party', we are generally somewhere in the neighborhood of mediocre at agreeing that certain things were the 'final straw', and work backward through that to actions to increase retention. One of the things that interested me about these conversations was that people tend to work chronologically backward through many of their complaints. But what was surprising was that some people would go all the way back to their first weeks. To the first straws. The warning signs they ignored. In a way this is not unlike talking to someone who just broke up with a romantic partner. And while their ex may realize that his/her problems started back with some early inconsiderate behavior that snowballed, and resolve to 'do better next time', I rarely see companies do this, unless I instigate it. Point is, these petty slights stack up, and can become a big part of someone's narrative for abandoning you (often in a huff). First impressions are important, and you dismiss them at your own peril.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    What? GP's response is terse but not impolite, and explaining what an abbreviation means is a far cry from "smacking people with tribal knowledge", it's just table stakes explanation in a field which requires precision. The only reason modern computing got where it is today is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If we go back and re-litigate every naming decision of the past several decades just to make newcomers feel welcome, all progress will slow as we collectively devolve into continuous bikeshedding.
    - hinkley 5y ago
      I'm talking about the name GenServer, not brobinson's response. There is the corollary: If we have not seen farther, it is because giants were standing on our toes. There's a huge degree of cognitive dissonance on these issues. Just because something had a reason in the past doesn't mean we have to keep doing it forever. Also "nobody understands" why people keep re-inventing wheels. It's not all hubris, at least not all the time. It's also declaring open season on those past compromises, especially the ones people bump into immediately. Especially the ones the current maintainers immediately get defensive about. Technology dies for a lot of reasons, but the apologists never seem to grasp that the apologies are a stopgap. They explain the pain, they don't cure it. Believe it or not, I'm pro-Elixir. It's just that as I learn any new technology, I start filling out proverbial bingo card boxes for the things I can predict the next person will complain about. Is that a bit cynical? It could be, but it also serves as my todo list for when someone makes an offhand comment about how you really don't have to do this dumb thing, you could use this library that does it for you. Now my coworkers either don't have to worry about that or I have a suggestion when they do. Turns out when people are in pain, they appreciate sympathy a lot more than they appreciate being gaslit about how it's just their poor sense of history. Their blatantly implied selfishness. GenServer could use a new name. I think we forget sometimes that you can rename old things by giving them a second, better name and phasing out the old one. I don't think there's anything seditious in that statement.
      - pmontra 5y ago
        I've been using Elixir for 4 years, it pays my bills and I generally like it. GenServer could be a misleading name (it never occurred to me) but the real mess is the bag of handle this / handle that function names. They follow the conventions of Erlang [1] but Elixir's developers could have cast some syntactic sugar on top of it. The real name of those functions is in their first argument. handle_* is mostly noise. [1] https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html
sbuttgereit 5y ago
When I first came to Elixir & Erlang, their naming convention gave me no trouble at all. Now of course, I haven't done much for decades with languages that would have given me the mental model that would bias me to automatically be thinking of the things you name. I do know that there are certain well-worn development environments where you might gain such a bias. Remember that Erlang, too, and some of these technologies, names, and conventions, are pretty old and that they may not have been as evocative then as they might be today with some of their conventions. "Process" almost certainly would have been confusing to the neophyte, but appropriately descriptive nonetheless, but "Gen" for Generic.... eh. Anyway I guess the point is that I have to look inward to see if something like this rubbing me the wrong way is the substandard choice of the project I'm diving into, or if it's me bringing unwarranted biases and assumptions to the table.
elsurudo 5y ago
You got downvoted, but I agree. "Gen" is very typically used as a shorthand for "generate", whereas I've _only_ seen it used as a shorthand for "generic" in the Erlang/Elixir world.
- dnautics 5y ago
  I have sympathy for gp. But also, naming things is hard. Wait till you dig deeper into the erlang rabbit hole and discover the undocumented gen module.
  - hazn 5y ago
    And in recent computer science (~30 years) we often pick unintuitive names for things. Examples: WebAssembly(neither web, nor assembly), Serverless (has a server, actually), JavaScript.
- intergalplan 5y ago
  Upvoted, then downvoted to hell, haha. IDK, I don't live in Elixir and that name trips me up every damn time I need to read/write some. Everywhere else, "gen" is typically a shortening of "generate" (which I don't love either—just write the word—but it's fairly common), and "generic" rarely occurs in code at all (elsewhere related to programming, yes—in code, no) [EDIT] incidentally, as long as I'm complaining about Elixir, I've done a lot of Ruby and have no clue whatsoever why people act like Elixir is similar to it, yet constantly see "oh yeah, it's so easy for Rubyists because it's so similar". Then again, I haven't done any Phoenix with Elixir, so maybe they just mean Phoenix is Rails-like.
enraged_camel 5y ago
GenServer is a (behavior) module name. IMO, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to expect it to mean “generate server”. If it was a gen_server() function then sure. Or a ServerGen module - that generates servers.
- intergalplan 5y ago
  The name makes me read it as "generate server". Nothing else about it fits with that. That's the problem.
dudul 5y ago
I think it is accepted in the Erlang/Elixir community that some names are pretty poor yeah. GenServer, OTP, Application. Even Supervisor to a degree, I've read a post making the case that it's more a lifecycle manager than a supervisor. Anyway, it's just about getting used to the terms and what they truly mean.
argvargc 5y ago
It's a terrible name, anything starting with the abbreviated prefix "Gen" is hopelessly ambiguous. Is it "Generate"? "General"? "Generic"? "Genetic"? "Genesis"? While some would certainly be less frequently encountered, all can easily be found in programming context. When seeing "GenXxxxx" I could well understand someone feeling immediate brain-fog. That said, this is one of very few criticisms I can level at Elixir, and it's a tiny part of the eco-system - literally, one single name. I wonder would it be easy to alias?
- OkayPhysicist 5y ago
  Yup. alias GenServer, as: GenericServer Done.

pessimizer 5y ago

Is "general" or "generic" more misleading than "generate"?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

brobinson 5y ago

It's "generic" server: http://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html http://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html

hinkley 5y ago
The sooner you start smacking people with tribal knowledge, the sooner many people start to back away slowly. I used to interview ex-coworkers. I don't do it as much anymore because it gets old/depressing and the answers tend not to change that much. If, for the purposes of thinking about turnover, you look at a former colleague as an 'aggrieved party', we are generally somewhere in the neighborhood of mediocre at agreeing that certain things were the 'final straw', and work backward through that to actions to increase retention. One of the things that interested me about these conversations was that people tend to work chronologically backward through many of their complaints. But what was surprising was that some people would go all the way back to their first weeks. To the first straws. The warning signs they ignored. In a way this is not unlike talking to someone who just broke up with a romantic partner. And while their ex may realize that his/her problems started back with some early inconsiderate behavior that snowballed, and resolve to 'do better next time', I rarely see companies do this, unless I instigate it. Point is, these petty slights stack up, and can become a big part of someone's narrative for abandoning you (often in a huff). First impressions are important, and you dismiss them at your own peril.
- dasil003 5y ago
  What? GP's response is terse but not impolite, and explaining what an abbreviation means is a far cry from "smacking people with tribal knowledge", it's just table stakes explanation in a field which requires precision. The only reason modern computing got where it is today is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If we go back and re-litigate every naming decision of the past several decades just to make newcomers feel welcome, all progress will slow as we collectively devolve into continuous bikeshedding.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    I'm talking about the name GenServer, not brobinson's response. There is the corollary: If we have not seen farther, it is because giants were standing on our toes. There's a huge degree of cognitive dissonance on these issues. Just because something had a reason in the past doesn't mean we have to keep doing it forever. Also "nobody understands" why people keep re-inventing wheels. It's not all hubris, at least not all the time. It's also declaring open season on those past compromises, especially the ones people bump into immediately. Especially the ones the current maintainers immediately get defensive about. Technology dies for a lot of reasons, but the apologists never seem to grasp that the apologies are a stopgap. They explain the pain, they don't cure it. Believe it or not, I'm pro-Elixir. It's just that as I learn any new technology, I start filling out proverbial bingo card boxes for the things I can predict the next person will complain about. Is that a bit cynical? It could be, but it also serves as my todo list for when someone makes an offhand comment about how you really don't have to do this dumb thing, you could use this library that does it for you. Now my coworkers either don't have to worry about that or I have a suggestion when they do. Turns out when people are in pain, they appreciate sympathy a lot more than they appreciate being gaslit about how it's just their poor sense of history. Their blatantly implied selfishness. GenServer could use a new name. I think we forget sometimes that you can rename old things by giving them a second, better name and phasing out the old one. I don't think there's anything seditious in that statement.
    - pmontra 5y ago
      I've been using Elixir for 4 years, it pays my bills and I generally like it. GenServer could be a misleading name (it never occurred to me) but the real mess is the bag of handle this / handle that function names. They follow the conventions of Erlang [1] but Elixir's developers could have cast some syntactic sugar on top of it. The real name of those functions is in their first argument. handle_* is mostly noise. [1] https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html https://erlang.org/doc/man/gen_server.html

sbuttgereit 5y ago

When I first came to Elixir & Erlang, their naming convention gave me no trouble at all. Now of course, I haven't done much for decades with languages that would have given me the mental model that would bias me to automatically be thinking of the things you name. I do know that there are certain well-worn development environments where you might gain such a bias. Remember that Erlang, too, and some of these technologies, names, and conventions, are pretty old and that they may not have been as evocative then as they might be today with some of their conventions. "Process" almost certainly would have been confusing to the neophyte, but appropriately descriptive nonetheless, but "Gen" for Generic.... eh. Anyway I guess the point is that I have to look inward to see if something like this rubbing me the wrong way is the substandard choice of the project I'm diving into, or if it's me bringing unwarranted biases and assumptions to the table.

elsurudo 5y ago

You got downvoted, but I agree. "Gen" is very typically used as a shorthand for "generate", whereas I've _only_ seen it used as a shorthand for "generic" in the Erlang/Elixir world.

dnautics 5y ago
I have sympathy for gp. But also, naming things is hard. Wait till you dig deeper into the erlang rabbit hole and discover the undocumented gen module.
- hazn 5y ago
  And in recent computer science (~30 years) we often pick unintuitive names for things. Examples: WebAssembly(neither web, nor assembly), Serverless (has a server, actually), JavaScript.
intergalplan 5y ago
Upvoted, then downvoted to hell, haha. IDK, I don't live in Elixir and that name trips me up every damn time I need to read/write some. Everywhere else, "gen" is typically a shortening of "generate" (which I don't love either—just write the word—but it's fairly common), and "generic" rarely occurs in code at all (elsewhere related to programming, yes—in code, no) [EDIT] incidentally, as long as I'm complaining about Elixir, I've done a lot of Ruby and have no clue whatsoever why people act like Elixir is similar to it, yet constantly see "oh yeah, it's so easy for Rubyists because it's so similar". Then again, I haven't done any Phoenix with Elixir, so maybe they just mean Phoenix is Rails-like.

enraged_camel 5y ago

GenServer is a (behavior) module name. IMO, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to expect it to mean “generate server”. If it was a gen_server() function then sure. Or a ServerGen module - that generates servers.

intergalplan 5y ago
The name makes me read it as "generate server". Nothing else about it fits with that. That's the problem.

dudul 5y ago

I think it is accepted in the Erlang/Elixir community that some names are pretty poor yeah. GenServer, OTP, Application. Even Supervisor to a degree, I've read a post making the case that it's more a lifecycle manager than a supervisor. Anyway, it's just about getting used to the terms and what they truly mean.

argvargc 5y ago

It's a terrible name, anything starting with the abbreviated prefix "Gen" is hopelessly ambiguous. Is it "Generate"? "General"? "Generic"? "Genetic"? "Genesis"? While some would certainly be less frequently encountered, all can easily be found in programming context. When seeing "GenXxxxx" I could well understand someone feeling immediate brain-fog. That said, this is one of very few criticisms I can level at Elixir, and it's a tiny part of the eco-system - literally, one single name. I wonder would it be easy to alias?

OkayPhysicist 5y ago
Yup. alias GenServer, as: GenericServer Done.