5 ms·

It seems like a great product, with a terrible name.

by Shorel 3y ago

walthamstow 3y ago
High Fructose Corn Syrup is already taken :D
0xEF 3y ago
Out if curiosity, what's your take on the name? I'm okay with it, despite preferring names that help frame the product's purpose in my mind, but I can see the kid appeal in a name like Sugar Lab. Maybe I am missing some negative association, though.
- Beijinger 3y ago
  Sugar Daddy?
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  Sugar just conjures up all sorts of negative connotations these days, especially if you are a parent. Like, as a parent, I see one of my major tasks in life as preparing my kid to enter a world where sugar (and lots of other forms of unhealthy but pleasurable things) are much more ubiquitous than the environment in which their basic intuitions about behavior evolved. One other area beyond literal physical sugar where this is true is technology, where a huge part of the ecosystem is actively predatory on children's time and attention. So the combination of "Sugar" as a name and something vaguely related to tech just gives bad vibes all around. I've tried Sugar out and I frankly find it somewhat condescending to children. Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. When my kid was barely able to read I was showing him how to edit code and observe how it changes the behavior of characters in a game. He got it. We don't need goofy simplified user interfaces.
  - dustfinger 3y ago
    > Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. I could not agree with this statement more. I started teaching my daughter Python and bash when she was 8. I am currently teaching my son (11) C++ and bash and he does all of his coding in emacs. They both use exwm and are eager to continue learning. Having said that, I can see a huge challenge for non-technical parents. If those families would like to teach their children about computers, operating systems, the internet, web browsers and possibly programming, they need help from somewhere. I don't think my kids would have stuck with it if I had just handed them a link to the RFC standards [1] or the c++ getting started resources [2]. I really can't say how I would have approached ensuring my kids had a head start with technical computer knowledge had I not the knowledge myself. It is a predatory world out there, and access to your child's attention is valuable since they are the future. It must be difficult for parents who are conscious of this to find quality technical learning resources for their kids. [1] https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/ https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/ [2] https://isocpp.org/get-started https://isocpp.org/get-started
    - oven9342 3y ago
      >I really can't say how I would have approached ensuring my kids had a head start with technical computer knowledge had I not the knowledge myself. Yeah, I was wondering how to teach my kid some computer languages I never quite got the hang of
    - xrd 3y ago
      I would really, really like to read more about the approaches you are taking to teaching your kids to code. My kids are all on Linux computers and I'm trying to wean them off iPads and consumption devices. But it feels like addictive apps can draw them back very quickly (looking at you, YouTube).
      - 3y ago
- Rygian 3y ago
  We should be treating sugar as an addictive, crave-inducing substance. See for example https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-sugar-addiction https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-sugar-addiction
- sheperd209 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - 0xEF 3y ago
    I agree, the replies I'm seeing to my initial comment are just dumb. One person replied "sugar daddy" which says more about them than it does about the word and use of "sugar." I get the impression that this thread attracted some hangry nerds who can't virtue signal fast enough about the horrors of sugar in food. We get it, but in the end, it's just a fun name for a kids product. Save your energy for the actual food industry, people. Yeesh.
- ramblenode 3y ago
  Sugar is basically the recreational drug of children. It's normalized, but it's known to be addictive and harmful if consumed in excess (which it frequently is). Society is now starting to recognize the addictive and harmful potential of digital/smartphone overconsumption in children. To name a digital children's product "sugar" evokes (to me) digital addiction, the attention economy, and how children need to get off their phones. I don't read too much into names, but the branding does feel a bit obtuse at this cultural moment.
- Shorel 3y ago
  I simply see it as search word-space collision. In the future, whenever I search for "sugar" I will have to deal with hundreds of unrelated results for a programming language. I see the same issue with go, d, eclipse, and a few other overloaded words. This is also the reason why xkcd is such a great name.
  - 0xEF 3y ago
    Do you search for broad terms like "sugar" a lot? Honest question, since I rarely, if ever, find doing so useful, even when using Google search alternatives. Generally, I am looking for specific information about the subject. If we use edible sugar as our example, I might be looking for "how is cane sugar processed" or "temperature for sugar hard crack stage." Or, if I really want a general overview of something, it's "sugar wikipedia."
    - defrost 3y ago
      Try: "sugar human bone char napoleon"
      - 0xEF 3y ago
        I'd heard of this. Disturbing, to say the least, but not something that will frighten me away from the word "sugar" which is the root of this thread. Bone char was also used in paint, but I'm not about to decry the painters of old over it. Our modern alternatives are in place.
    - Shorel 3y ago
      Same as you. I am trained to add Wikipedia or search in another way, because of the namespace conflict. Even that is not enough, after a while, and more and more words are needed. Some search engines are better or worse about this.
jajko 3y ago
Came to say exactly this... you want to get kids productive and head in good direction, so you name the tool for that as outright the worst possible thing they can eat. Because if you say 'lets do a bit of sugar now' kids will not immediately associate it with and imagine such junkiest food, not at all. Heck even for me as an adult my brain is just too quick. Absolutely worst, and brutally addictive. I am sorry but that's... looking for polite word... and failing to find one as a parent. Can I have some Heroin text editor, while writing back in my Cocaine email client, storing on Meth cluster? Of course all signed and verified by Fentanyl certificate store. There are literally 200k+ words in just 1 single language. Lets be a bit more creative (or compose name out of 2+ words to steer meaning at least a bit).
delichon 3y ago
Think of it as syntactic sugar and it kind of works, as in "some of this syntactic sugar makes it a lot easier to code."
corpMaverick 3y ago
Indeed, it is a terrible name! I feel very strongly. I would never point my kids to something like this.
toolslive 3y ago
worst name since "Office in a rack(TM)" ("I don't want no office in Iraq, son"). Well, actually, for French speaking people, I guess "systemd" is worse.
- lproven 3y ago
  > Well, actually, for French speaking people, I guess "systemd" is worse. Pourquoi?
  - toolslive 3y ago
    (From Wikipedia) Système D. The letter D refers to any one of the French nouns débrouille,[3] débrouillardise[4] or démerde (French slang). The verbs se débrouiller and se démerder
    - lproven 3y ago
      Aha! Merci.
rekado 3y ago
In the book "The Charisma Machine" they say that the name is a "cheekily intentional reference to something children love but adults are not so sure about". I think it's a good name.

It seems like a great product, with a terrible name.

by Shorel 3y ago

It seems like a great product, with a terrible name.

walthamstow 3y ago

High Fructose Corn Syrup is already taken :D

0xEF 3y ago

Out if curiosity, what's your take on the name? I'm okay with it, despite preferring names that help frame the product's purpose in my mind, but I can see the kid appeal in a name like Sugar Lab. Maybe I am missing some negative association, though.

Beijinger 3y ago
Sugar Daddy?
nathan_compton 3y ago
Sugar just conjures up all sorts of negative connotations these days, especially if you are a parent. Like, as a parent, I see one of my major tasks in life as preparing my kid to enter a world where sugar (and lots of other forms of unhealthy but pleasurable things) are much more ubiquitous than the environment in which their basic intuitions about behavior evolved. One other area beyond literal physical sugar where this is true is technology, where a huge part of the ecosystem is actively predatory on children's time and attention. So the combination of "Sugar" as a name and something vaguely related to tech just gives bad vibes all around. I've tried Sugar out and I frankly find it somewhat condescending to children. Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. When my kid was barely able to read I was showing him how to edit code and observe how it changes the behavior of characters in a game. He got it. We don't need goofy simplified user interfaces.
- dustfinger 3y ago
  > Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. I could not agree with this statement more. I started teaching my daughter Python and bash when she was 8. I am currently teaching my son (11) C++ and bash and he does all of his coding in emacs. They both use exwm and are eager to continue learning. Having said that, I can see a huge challenge for non-technical parents. If those families would like to teach their children about computers, operating systems, the internet, web browsers and possibly programming, they need help from somewhere. I don't think my kids would have stuck with it if I had just handed them a link to the RFC standards [1] or the c++ getting started resources [2]. I really can't say how I would have approached ensuring my kids had a head start with technical computer knowledge had I not the knowledge myself. It is a predatory world out there, and access to your child's attention is valuable since they are the future. It must be difficult for parents who are conscious of this to find quality technical learning resources for their kids. [1] https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/ https://www.ietf.org/standards/rfcs/ [2] https://isocpp.org/get-started https://isocpp.org/get-started
  - oven9342 3y ago
    >I really can't say how I would have approached ensuring my kids had a head start with technical computer knowledge had I not the knowledge myself. Yeah, I was wondering how to teach my kid some computer languages I never quite got the hang of
  - xrd 3y ago
    I would really, really like to read more about the approaches you are taking to teaching your kids to code. My kids are all on Linux computers and I'm trying to wean them off iPads and consumption devices. But it feels like addictive apps can draw them back very quickly (looking at you, YouTube).
    - 3y ago
Rygian 3y ago
We should be treating sugar as an addictive, crave-inducing substance. See for example https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-sugar-addiction https://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-sugar-addiction
sheperd209 3y ago
[flagged]
- 0xEF 3y ago
  I agree, the replies I'm seeing to my initial comment are just dumb. One person replied "sugar daddy" which says more about them than it does about the word and use of "sugar." I get the impression that this thread attracted some hangry nerds who can't virtue signal fast enough about the horrors of sugar in food. We get it, but in the end, it's just a fun name for a kids product. Save your energy for the actual food industry, people. Yeesh.
ramblenode 3y ago
Sugar is basically the recreational drug of children. It's normalized, but it's known to be addictive and harmful if consumed in excess (which it frequently is). Society is now starting to recognize the addictive and harmful potential of digital/smartphone overconsumption in children. To name a digital children's product "sugar" evokes (to me) digital addiction, the attention economy, and how children need to get off their phones. I don't read too much into names, but the branding does feel a bit obtuse at this cultural moment.
Shorel 3y ago
I simply see it as search word-space collision. In the future, whenever I search for "sugar" I will have to deal with hundreds of unrelated results for a programming language. I see the same issue with go, d, eclipse, and a few other overloaded words. This is also the reason why xkcd is such a great name.
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Do you search for broad terms like "sugar" a lot? Honest question, since I rarely, if ever, find doing so useful, even when using Google search alternatives. Generally, I am looking for specific information about the subject. If we use edible sugar as our example, I might be looking for "how is cane sugar processed" or "temperature for sugar hard crack stage." Or, if I really want a general overview of something, it's "sugar wikipedia."
  - defrost 3y ago
    Try: "sugar human bone char napoleon"
    - 0xEF 3y ago
      I'd heard of this. Disturbing, to say the least, but not something that will frighten me away from the word "sugar" which is the root of this thread. Bone char was also used in paint, but I'm not about to decry the painters of old over it. Our modern alternatives are in place.
  - Shorel 3y ago
    Same as you. I am trained to add Wikipedia or search in another way, because of the namespace conflict. Even that is not enough, after a while, and more and more words are needed. Some search engines are better or worse about this.

jajko 3y ago

Came to say exactly this... you want to get kids productive and head in good direction, so you name the tool for that as outright the worst possible thing they can eat. Because if you say 'lets do a bit of sugar now' kids will not immediately associate it with and imagine such junkiest food, not at all. Heck even for me as an adult my brain is just too quick. Absolutely worst, and brutally addictive. I am sorry but that's... looking for polite word... and failing to find one as a parent. Can I have some Heroin text editor, while writing back in my Cocaine email client, storing on Meth cluster? Of course all signed and verified by Fentanyl certificate store. There are literally 200k+ words in just 1 single language. Lets be a bit more creative (or compose name out of 2+ words to steer meaning at least a bit).

delichon 3y ago

Think of it as syntactic sugar and it kind of works, as in "some of this syntactic sugar makes it a lot easier to code."

corpMaverick 3y ago

Indeed, it is a terrible name! I feel very strongly. I would never point my kids to something like this.

toolslive 3y ago

worst name since "Office in a rack(TM)" ("I don't want no office in Iraq, son"). Well, actually, for French speaking people, I guess "systemd" is worse.

lproven 3y ago
> Well, actually, for French speaking people, I guess "systemd" is worse. Pourquoi?
- toolslive 3y ago
  (From Wikipedia) Système D. The letter D refers to any one of the French nouns débrouille,[3] débrouillardise[4] or démerde (French slang). The verbs se débrouiller and se démerder
  - lproven 3y ago
    Aha! Merci.

rekado 3y ago

In the book "The Charisma Machine" they say that the name is a "cheekily intentional reference to something children love but adults are not so sure about". I think it's a good name.