4 ms·

> MDN used to stand for Mozilla Developer Network. Now it’s just MDN. I spent a few minutes looking on the MDN site to see if I could find any mention of the fu

by OJFord 3y ago

> MDN used to stand for Mozilla Developer Network. Now it’s just MDN. I spent a few minutes looking on the MDN site to see if I could find any mention of the full name, but I guess they’re just all in on “MDN” now. Huh, yeah, nerd-sniped on that one; I can't find anything either.

jakub_g 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDN_Web_Docs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDN_Web_Docs
- OJFord 3y ago
  Now you link it, I vaguely remember it being a big deal around the time they dropped Servo and load of Rust people left (/were made redundant?), both as part of a broader shakeup/refocusing.
Bellend 3y ago
I remember a few years ago that Microsoft docs started to point to Mozilla docs, maybe part of Edge rebrand? Perhaps renaming to MDN during this agreement could leave someone like "huh is it M(ozilla)DN or M(icrosoft)DN??". I have no clue.
- doubled112 3y ago
  But M(icrosoft)DN was MSDN.
  - tentacleuno 3y ago
    Obligatory Wikipedia article[0]. For the curious, MSDN is now called Microsoft Docs. To the surprise of many, much of the documentation on the site is also open-source[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Developer_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Developer_Network [1]: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs
    - jonathanlydall 3y ago
      Your information is a little out of date, Microsoft Docs became part of Microsoft Learn, so MSDN is actually now Microsoft Learn, or part of it at least.
    - thaumasiotes 3y ago
      What's the surprise about documentation being open source? The overwhelming majority of the source is going to consist of the text of the documentation, which is open anyway.
  - chrisfinazzo 3y ago
    This is the point in the discussion where I'll point out that .NET started out as ".NET Passport", e.g, what people now think of as a Microsoft Account. See also Apple, who, after a relatively brief dalliance with the name iTools, rebranded its online service as ".mac". Sigh... I miss early Internet names like these, although I suppose the fact that the original dot com era didn't last and a bunch of early startups got wiped out - Pets.com, anyone? - gave it a stench that marketers were all too willing to run away from at the first possible opportunity.
    - lupire 3y ago
      .NET was terrible. .net already meant something else.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  That’s a clever and thoughtful idea, but those responsible for branding at Microsoft would burn the entire place down if this was ever to be the case.
vdaea 3y ago
It's in the url bar.
- OJFord 3y ago
  No it isn't, there's no 'network' and the order is different, and that's not what's discussed anyway. Though I suppose if the URL really was mozilla.developer.network it would make it less interesting whether the pages ever spelled it or not.
pfgallagher 3y ago
Searching for: site:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ "mozilla developer network" yielded ~115 results on Google
- GavinAnderegg 3y ago
  It is mentioned by its old name in older blog posts, but there seems to have been a rebrand to just "MDN". For example, there's no explanation of what MDN stands for on the About page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/about https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/about
stordoff 3y ago
There's a couple of mentions of it in side pages and in example code, but that's all I can find: > will soon be a proud part of the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/mdn-observatory/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/mdn-observatory/ (posted 25 October 2023) > Their brilliant but offbeat idea grew into today's Mozilla Developer Network https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/At_ten https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/At_ten (last modified 25 January 2024) > const heading = <h1>Mozilla Developer Network</h1>; https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing/Client-side_JavaScript_frameworks/React_getting_started https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_tes...
dylanpyle 3y ago
This change happened right about August 15, 2017... which I know only because somehow I happened to notice at the right moment where the branding had been updated but the page <title> had not. Here's the bug report I filed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1390381 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1390381
- newzisforsukas 3y ago
  https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-brings-microsoft-google-w3c-samsung-together-create-cross-browser-documentation-mdn/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-brings-microsoft...
JoshWVS 3y ago
I like calling these "anachronyms," because they're sort of like anachronistic acronyms (yes, fine, this one's _technically_ an initialism). I wrote a blog post[0] about them. [0]: https://simpsonian.ca/blog/anachronyms/ https://simpsonian.ca/blog/anachronyms/
- Nition 3y ago
  ARM might be another good one. Acorn computers don't even exist anymore.
  - Angostura 3y ago
    Sun Microsystems - came from Stanford University Network Apple's Siri, came from SRI - Stanford Research Institute
  - sgerenser 3y ago
    It’s no longer even an acronym, the official name is now Arm.
    - Nition 3y ago
      That's what I mean - that's how the parent defined an "anachronym". But yeah, there was that transitional phase where they first just redefined the acronym.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        But also, even later they got rid of the all-caps (at least mostly). It went from an acronym of nothing to just a word.
        djur 3y ago
        Isn't it "Arm" because it's British and Brits typically write pronounceable acronyms in proper noun case (e.g. "Nato" vs. "UN")?
atopal 3y ago
We made that change around 2017. Mozilla Developer Network is somewhat ambiguous. In surveys and user interviews people were confused about the name. Web developers thought it might be a resource specifically for Mozilla developers, which to be fair was the focus in the earlier days. The web platform documentation was just one part of many Mozilla related things documented on MDN for some time. In 2017 though the web platform documentation had grown to make up 95% of MDN's traffic and it had become clear that it was not primarily a resource for Mozilla developers anymore, the name change to "MDN Web Docs" was intended to reflect that change in focus.
- susam 3y ago
  When the expansion of the first letter of an acronym becomes obsolete, I think it is a good opportunity to turn the acronym into a recursive acronym, e.g., MDN = MDN Developer Network.
  - patze 3y ago
    This reminds me on the recursive XNA acronym which stands for “XNA’s not acronymed”.
    - lordchair 3y ago
      Or GNU which is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!" source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#Name
    - susam 3y ago
      Nice one! Thanks for sharing! One of my most favourite recursive acronyms is XINU which stands for "XINU Is Not Unix". The delightful thing about this acronym is that "XINU" is also the reverse of "UNIX". Upon a closer look, it turns out that for a given word W, a recursive acronym proclaiming that it is not W while simultaneously being the reverse of the word W, we need W to be of the form W = "?NI?" where each "?" denotes a distinct letter. Some fictitious examples: * ANIL ⇒ LINA = LINA Is Not ANIL. * KNIT ⇒ TINK = TINK Is Not KNIT. Words of the form "?N?" also work if we are happy with a contracted "is" in the acronym. In fact we can get circular recursive acronyms in such cases: * ANI = ANI's Not INA ⇔ INA = INA's Not ANI. * ONE = ONE's Not ENO ⇔ ENO = ENO's Not ONE. Both acronyms in each pair refer to each other thus making them circular while also being the reverse of each other! These could be useful names to express friendly banter between rival projects.
nerdile 3y ago
Hint: check the blog posts. As recent as October 2023.
Shorel 3y ago
Now it stands for the Mweb Developer Network xD
- account42 3y ago
  Mԍp Developer Network
- jonathanlydall 3y ago
  Mweb is the name of a South African ISP. Interestingly, they were one of the very first ISPs that I can remember, certainly one of the, if not the, most advertised to consumers at the time and I think it is the only ISP which still exists today from those very early days. I wouldn’t ever use them personally, an apt analogy might be that choosing them today is like choosing AOL in the US.

by OJFord 3y ago

jakub_g 3y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDN_Web_Docs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDN_Web_Docs

OJFord 3y ago
Now you link it, I vaguely remember it being a big deal around the time they dropped Servo and load of Rust people left (/were made redundant?), both as part of a broader shakeup/refocusing.

Bellend 3y ago

I remember a few years ago that Microsoft docs started to point to Mozilla docs, maybe part of Edge rebrand? Perhaps renaming to MDN during this agreement could leave someone like "huh is it M(ozilla)DN or M(icrosoft)DN??". I have no clue.

doubled112 3y ago
But M(icrosoft)DN was MSDN.
- tentacleuno 3y ago
  Obligatory Wikipedia article[0]. For the curious, MSDN is now called Microsoft Docs. To the surprise of many, much of the documentation on the site is also open-source[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Developer_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Developer_Network [1]: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs
  - jonathanlydall 3y ago
    Your information is a little out of date, Microsoft Docs became part of Microsoft Learn, so MSDN is actually now Microsoft Learn, or part of it at least.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    What's the surprise about documentation being open source? The overwhelming majority of the source is going to consist of the text of the documentation, which is open anyway.
- chrisfinazzo 3y ago
  This is the point in the discussion where I'll point out that .NET started out as ".NET Passport", e.g, what people now think of as a Microsoft Account. See also Apple, who, after a relatively brief dalliance with the name iTools, rebranded its online service as ".mac". Sigh... I miss early Internet names like these, although I suppose the fact that the original dot com era didn't last and a bunch of early startups got wiped out - Pets.com, anyone? - gave it a stench that marketers were all too willing to run away from at the first possible opportunity.
  - lupire 3y ago
    .NET was terrible. .net already meant something else.
Waterluvian 3y ago
That’s a clever and thoughtful idea, but those responsible for branding at Microsoft would burn the entire place down if this was ever to be the case.

vdaea 3y ago

It's in the url bar.

OJFord 3y ago
No it isn't, there's no 'network' and the order is different, and that's not what's discussed anyway. Though I suppose if the URL really was mozilla.developer.network it would make it less interesting whether the pages ever spelled it or not.

pfgallagher 3y ago

Searching for: site:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ "mozilla developer network" yielded ~115 results on Google

GavinAnderegg 3y ago
It is mentioned by its old name in older blog posts, but there seems to have been a rebrand to just "MDN". For example, there's no explanation of what MDN stands for on the About page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/about https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/about

stordoff 3y ago

There's a couple of mentions of it in side pages and in example code, but that's all I can find: > will soon be a proud part of the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/mdn-observatory/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/mdn-observatory/ (posted 25 October 2023) > Their brilliant but offbeat idea grew into today's Mozilla Developer Network https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/At_ten https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/At_ten (last modified 25 January 2024) > const heading = <h1>Mozilla Developer Network</h1>; https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_testing/Client-side_JavaScript_frameworks/React_getting_started https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Tools_and_tes...

dylanpyle 3y ago

This change happened right about August 15, 2017... which I know only because somehow I happened to notice at the right moment where the branding had been updated but the page <title> had not. Here's the bug report I filed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1390381 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1390381

newzisforsukas 3y ago
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-brings-microsoft-google-w3c-samsung-together-create-cross-browser-documentation-mdn/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-brings-microsoft...

JoshWVS 3y ago

I like calling these "anachronyms," because they're sort of like anachronistic acronyms (yes, fine, this one's _technically_ an initialism). I wrote a blog post[0] about them. [0]: https://simpsonian.ca/blog/anachronyms/ https://simpsonian.ca/blog/anachronyms/

Nition 3y ago
ARM might be another good one. Acorn computers don't even exist anymore.
- Angostura 3y ago
  Sun Microsystems - came from Stanford University Network Apple's Siri, came from SRI - Stanford Research Institute
- sgerenser 3y ago
  It’s no longer even an acronym, the official name is now Arm.
  - Nition 3y ago
    That's what I mean - that's how the parent defined an "anachronym". But yeah, there was that transitional phase where they first just redefined the acronym.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      But also, even later they got rid of the all-caps (at least mostly). It went from an acronym of nothing to just a word.
      - djur 3y ago
        Isn't it "Arm" because it's British and Brits typically write pronounceable acronyms in proper noun case (e.g. "Nato" vs. "UN")?

atopal 3y ago

We made that change around 2017. Mozilla Developer Network is somewhat ambiguous. In surveys and user interviews people were confused about the name. Web developers thought it might be a resource specifically for Mozilla developers, which to be fair was the focus in the earlier days. The web platform documentation was just one part of many Mozilla related things documented on MDN for some time. In 2017 though the web platform documentation had grown to make up 95% of MDN's traffic and it had become clear that it was not primarily a resource for Mozilla developers anymore, the name change to "MDN Web Docs" was intended to reflect that change in focus.

susam 3y ago
When the expansion of the first letter of an acronym becomes obsolete, I think it is a good opportunity to turn the acronym into a recursive acronym, e.g., MDN = MDN Developer Network.
- patze 3y ago
  This reminds me on the recursive XNA acronym which stands for “XNA’s not acronymed”.
  - lordchair 3y ago
    Or GNU which is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!" source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#Name
  - susam 3y ago
    Nice one! Thanks for sharing! One of my most favourite recursive acronyms is XINU which stands for "XINU Is Not Unix". The delightful thing about this acronym is that "XINU" is also the reverse of "UNIX". Upon a closer look, it turns out that for a given word W, a recursive acronym proclaiming that it is not W while simultaneously being the reverse of the word W, we need W to be of the form W = "?NI?" where each "?" denotes a distinct letter. Some fictitious examples: * ANIL ⇒ LINA = LINA Is Not ANIL. * KNIT ⇒ TINK = TINK Is Not KNIT. Words of the form "?N?" also work if we are happy with a contracted "is" in the acronym. In fact we can get circular recursive acronyms in such cases: * ANI = ANI's Not INA ⇔ INA = INA's Not ANI. * ONE = ONE's Not ENO ⇔ ENO = ENO's Not ONE. Both acronyms in each pair refer to each other thus making them circular while also being the reverse of each other! These could be useful names to express friendly banter between rival projects.

nerdile 3y ago

Hint: check the blog posts. As recent as October 2023.

Shorel 3y ago

Now it stands for the Mweb Developer Network xD

account42 3y ago
Mԍp Developer Network
jonathanlydall 3y ago
Mweb is the name of a South African ISP. Interestingly, they were one of the very first ISPs that I can remember, certainly one of the, if not the, most advertised to consumers at the time and I think it is the only ISP which still exists today from those very early days. I wouldn’t ever use them personally, an apt analogy might be that choosing them today is like choosing AOL in the US.