5 ms·

I had a professor that claimed to have invented the name ECMAScript. He said that they were arguing about the name for this new standard and weren't moving forw

by rblatz 3y ago

I had a professor that claimed to have invented the name ECMAScript. He said that they were arguing about the name for this new standard and weren't moving forward so he proposed a name so awful that they'd have to come back later to change it, so the argument could be put on hold for the time being. Then they never came back to fix it.

rany_ 3y ago
"Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution."
kreetx 3y ago
Who is the professor?
ape4 3y ago
Obviously not a marketing professor
breischl 3y ago
lol, I did that with an internal tool once. It actually worked in that case - the name was changed. Although the "so terrible it couldn't exist" name persisted in some dark corners for several years.
tzs 3y ago
A similar thing happened at a company I worked for in the '80s, a 68k based Unix workstation maker named Callan Data Systems, named after David Callan who was one of its founders. There were two other founders and they were all equal partners, so I asked one of them why Callan was the one it was named after. What happened was that they had been unable to agree on a name all throughout the early stages of starting the company. They got to the point where they really need to incorporate to continue, but still could not agree on a name. Tempers were rising and they decided to step away for a few days to calm down, and during that time two of them went out of town for a hunting trip. Callan stayed home. When the other two got back Callan told them that he'd incorporated with a temporary name, which they could change when they finally thought of a real name they liked. The other two were annoyed, but agreed that this was better than having everything be on hold because they could not incorporate. That temporary name was "Callan Data Systems" and they never did come up with a replacement, and stopped trying when it had been so long that changing the name would have been a pain.

by rblatz 3y ago

rany_ 3y ago

"Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution."

kreetx 3y ago

Who is the professor?

ape4 3y ago

Obviously not a marketing professor

breischl 3y ago

lol, I did that with an internal tool once. It actually worked in that case - the name was changed. Although the "so terrible it couldn't exist" name persisted in some dark corners for several years.

tzs 3y ago

A similar thing happened at a company I worked for in the '80s, a 68k based Unix workstation maker named Callan Data Systems, named after David Callan who was one of its founders. There were two other founders and they were all equal partners, so I asked one of them why Callan was the one it was named after. What happened was that they had been unable to agree on a name all throughout the early stages of starting the company. They got to the point where they really need to incorporate to continue, but still could not agree on a name. Tempers were rising and they decided to step away for a few days to calm down, and during that time two of them went out of town for a hunting trip. Callan stayed home. When the other two got back Callan told them that he'd incorporated with a temporary name, which they could change when they finally thought of a real name they liked. The other two were annoyed, but agreed that this was better than having everything be on hold because they could not incorporate. That temporary name was "Callan Data Systems" and they never did come up with a replacement, and stopped trying when it had been so long that changing the name would have been a pain.