3 ms·
Reminds me of Feynman's anecdote about the names of a bird. > See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halzenfugel, and in Chi
by have_faith 4y ago
Reminds me of Feynman's anecdote about the names of a bird.
> See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way.
- son_of_gloin 4y agoThe name is first and foremost a way to attach that deeper knowledge of the bird to a symbol so it can be communicated to others. The name is necessary, but usually tells you very little about the thing it refers to.
- rhodin 4y agoCounter-anecdote time from Murray Gel-Mann, who did think names were important [1] [1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/05/remembering-murray-gell-mann-1929-2019-inventor-of-quarks-/#with-murray-at-caltech https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/05/remembering-murr...
- taeric 4y agoI don't think anyone in computers can purport to names being important. Shell's sort, Bloom's filter, awk, c++, Java vs JavaScript.... The number of names that are misleading or almost willfully obtuse is absurdly high. (I'm actually cheating for folks in my list, as I typically see it just shown as shell sort and bloom filter. Which hides that it is named for someone.)
- stonemetal12 4y agoAt least Shell invented the sort named after him. In the sciences you have Stigler's Law (no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy
- taeric 4y agoThat is hilarious! Yeah, my qualm is less about Shell's sort being named after him, and more that many places present it as shell sort, where you can easily think there will be some form of shell game involved. Akin to thinking a bloom filter must be something about growth or flowers blooming. I also don't mind algorithms named after people, and can understand some of how that gives provenance, at the least. The Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm is a good example of that. What makes things difficult is that many of the other sort algorithms were not after people's names. Unless there is a Merge that I am unaware of. :D