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Even something like "c" does not look like a good name anymore. For example searching for something C related often turns up hundreds of links for C++, C# many

Even something like "c" does not look like a good name anymore. For example searching for something C related often turns up hundreds of links for C++, C# many of them not relevant to the search topic. Also choosing names with non-obvious pronunciation is also a peeve, sometimes it can become a marker between those who know how to pronounce it and those who don't. For example Godot.

techdragon 5y ago
Like the “Go” programming language. Only Google could have gotten away with this name since to be honest I was pretty sure it used to be a “do not brother indexing”/“stop word” back in the day. So I honestly suspect Google had to alter their search engine to search for the programming language they invented just because they made it impossible to search for because of how bad the name is.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  C gets a pass because it is older than search engines, but Go was a pretty bad name.
- matsemann 5y ago
  They did alter it for google+, at least.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > They did alter it for google+, at least. Yes, and nerfed the + search operator in the process.
- ectopod 5y ago
  When Go was new they recommended using "golang" for web searches. I still do though it sounds like it's unnecessary now.
  - chrsig 5y ago
    there's also a non trivial amount of zealots that then complain when people refer to the language as "golang"...it's not correct, but hardly surprising either
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      At this point clang and rcran should as well change their official names. Golang has better possibilities on the horizon, but it wouldn't hurt either.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  For me it seems like that the common workarounds (searching for "golang" "csharp" etc) make it not really a problem.
jeroenhd 5y ago
> Even something like "c" does not look like a good name anymore. For example searching for something C related often turns up hundreds of links for C++, C# many of them not relevant to the search topic. That's not a naming problem as much as it's a search engine problem. Search engines ignore anything that's not remotely alphabetic so for the longest time Google saw "C++ C#" as "C C". More and more characters are taken into account when searching these days, but it's still very error prone today. If anything, C# was a mistake because it was developed after the first search engines entered the web. Then again, this was made by the same company that developed frameworks called "COM", "COM+" and ".NET". The names C and C++ were chosen way before this could have ever been perceived as a problem, because only lunatics and tinfoil hats could have predicted the internet in its current form all the way back in 1983. In my experience, adding a revision (C99, C11, C17) to a search query often gets more relevant results specifically for C actual. For C++ the search term cpp always works for me. It's a bit of a pain to teach yourself to use, but after a while you start to get used to it.
- not2b 5y ago
  "c programming language" works fine.

techdragon 5y ago

Like the “Go” programming language. Only Google could have gotten away with this name since to be honest I was pretty sure it used to be a “do not brother indexing”/“stop word” back in the day. So I honestly suspect Google had to alter their search engine to search for the programming language they invented just because they made it impossible to search for because of how bad the name is.

bee_rider 5y ago
C gets a pass because it is older than search engines, but Go was a pretty bad name.
matsemann 5y ago
They did alter it for google+, at least.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > They did alter it for google+, at least. Yes, and nerfed the + search operator in the process.
ectopod 5y ago
When Go was new they recommended using "golang" for web searches. I still do though it sounds like it's unnecessary now.
- chrsig 5y ago
  there's also a non trivial amount of zealots that then complain when people refer to the language as "golang"...it's not correct, but hardly surprising either
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    At this point clang and rcran should as well change their official names. Golang has better possibilities on the horizon, but it wouldn't hurt either.
PeterisP 5y ago
For me it seems like that the common workarounds (searching for "golang" "csharp" etc) make it not really a problem.

jeroenhd 5y ago

> Even something like "c" does not look like a good name anymore. For example searching for something C related often turns up hundreds of links for C++, C# many of them not relevant to the search topic. That's not a naming problem as much as it's a search engine problem. Search engines ignore anything that's not remotely alphabetic so for the longest time Google saw "C++ C#" as "C C". More and more characters are taken into account when searching these days, but it's still very error prone today. If anything, C# was a mistake because it was developed after the first search engines entered the web. Then again, this was made by the same company that developed frameworks called "COM", "COM+" and ".NET". The names C and C++ were chosen way before this could have ever been perceived as a problem, because only lunatics and tinfoil hats could have predicted the internet in its current form all the way back in 1983. In my experience, adding a revision (C99, C11, C17) to a search query often gets more relevant results specifically for C actual. For C++ the search term cpp always works for me. It's a bit of a pain to teach yourself to use, but after a while you start to get used to it.

not2b 5y ago
"c programming language" works fine.