3 ms·

I have a small idea of a rant on how we seem to purposely make naming things hard. A common way we do that, in computers, is to drop the possessive. I wouldn'

by taeric 2y ago

I have a small idea of a rant on how we seem to purposely make naming things hard. A common way we do that, in computers, is to drop the possessive. I wouldn't go into Bloom filters expecting something to justify the verb/action "bloom" being part of the name, if we always referred to it as Bloom's filter. (Similar for Shell's sort...)

kibwen 2y ago
The practice of naming things after their inventors, while well-intentioned, introduces so much friction that it ought to just be abolished. Imagine how worse things would be if a directed acyclic graph were instead a "Euler path", or if a hash table were instead a "Luhn collection". The former terms may be jargon, but at least they're consistent, identifiable, and reasonably self-describing. I'm already frustrated that we're stuck with "boolean" as the most fundamental of all data types.
- taeric 2y ago
  My favorite is when we do have two words for the same thing. People out there really think there is a major distinction between stochastic and random. Or, worse, when people let the names of things keep them from learning them. Imaginary numbers being high on that list.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Imaginary numbers sound more approachable than complex numbers.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      A personal matter I suppose, of how comfortable you are with imagining things :^) The real/imaginary dichotomy is the confusing part, having a rotational component doesn't make them any less real. O that reminds me, I'll just drop this link for my favorite video lecture on the matter full of visualizations, 13 parts, "Imaginary numbers are real" https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703G3KJXapKkNaF https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703G3KJ... If I had it my way the distinction would be straight and twisted.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  In reality, those kinds of names are generally not intended as some kind of trophy in the first place. It's more organic. They just grow out of colleagues, speaking amongst themselves, referring to a fellow colleague's particular idea or elaboration. They all share a common base understanding of their field, many know of the colleague directly, and all know how to look something up if they know the colleagues name and gist of the idea. And so that's how they refer to it. Once in a while, these so-named insights prove really important or lasting -- after the fact -- and the name continues to stick because it's the one everybody was using. Meanwhile, most of the time, the insights just kind of fade back into the baseline body of knowledge and either don't break out at all or evolve through some collaborative work that earns a more formal name.
- harperlee 2y ago
  On the other hand, trying too hard to shoehorn semantic descriptions on names ends up with pathological cases (yes, chemistry, I’m looking at you!). Jokes apart, words are symbols that even if they have some semantics through etymology, in general they are quite arbitrary. I’d rather go with outlandish names that help mnemonics, if I were to choose. Names from people can serve that purpose; I still remember what a Kohonen map is, back from Uni, because of the childish resemblance with “cohone” (Andalusian for cojones), and a silly joke from a close friend.
  - threatofrain 2y ago
    But if we choose words that are famous names, they are far less likely to be systematically used as a building block. And woe be to us if that individual invents too many things, because then the meaning of their name will be too ambiguous.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    There's no winning with chemistry. It's either 2-ethyl-cis-alpha-nonsenium, or it's "the sonic hedgehog domain". It's like you get a choice between math hell or cartoon hell.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  > I'm already frustrated that we're stuck with "boolean" as the most fundamental of all data types. We do have another name for it. "Bit." You could probably roll out a new programming language today that uses something like `let shouldUpdate: bit = true;` or without blowing too much of your novelty budget. Or `u1`, if you wanted to allow arbitrary integer sizes.
  - xen0 2y ago
    I think 'bit' risks confusing storage with the type (a Boolean is often stored using at least a byte, not a single bit).
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I had a math teacher who warned us: > If you don't give your creations good names, they might name them after you. From his tone it was clear that this was something to be avoided. I don't know whether too late to retcon existing names but let's try to do better going forward.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
I think two of the absolute worst names of them all are "dynamic programming" and "memoization". Don't get me wrong: I'll write you a 0-1 knapsack using DP in a hurry without any problem but it's just crazy that it's called "dynamic programming". I don't care about the justification for the term "dynamic programming" nor for the term "memoization". They are just plain wrong. Honestly compared to these two, "Bloom filter" sounds reasonable. Heck, if "dynamic programming" had been called "Bellman programming" and "memoization" had been called "Mitchie memo" (by the name of their respective inventors), it would be less confusing. So maybe, after all, that "Bloom filter" isn't that bad. Had we let the author pick a name, maybe he'd have picked "ephemeral spectrum" or something like that. Yeah. I think naming after the name of the inventor is far from the worse actually. And it kinda gives credit where it's due too.
- taeric 2y ago
  To be clear, my complaint here is that we stopped calling it Bloom's filter, and shortened that to Bloom Filter. At least Hoare's sort was shortened to "quick sort". :D We can leave it as named after someone, but that is a lot easier to understand if you keep the possessive. Plank's constant is a good one, in that vein.
- antonjs 2y ago
  The story of why it is called dynamic programming is pretty great: https://conversableeconomist.com/2022/08/24/why-is-it-called-dynamic-programming/ https://conversableeconomist.com/2022/08/24/why-is-it-called...
deleted 2y ago
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by taeric 2y ago

kibwen 2y ago

The practice of naming things after their inventors, while well-intentioned, introduces so much friction that it ought to just be abolished. Imagine how worse things would be if a directed acyclic graph were instead a "Euler path", or if a hash table were instead a "Luhn collection". The former terms may be jargon, but at least they're consistent, identifiable, and reasonably self-describing. I'm already frustrated that we're stuck with "boolean" as the most fundamental of all data types.

taeric 2y ago
My favorite is when we do have two words for the same thing. People out there really think there is a major distinction between stochastic and random. Or, worse, when people let the names of things keep them from learning them. Imaginary numbers being high on that list.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Imaginary numbers sound more approachable than complex numbers.
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    A personal matter I suppose, of how comfortable you are with imagining things :^) The real/imaginary dichotomy is the confusing part, having a rotational component doesn't make them any less real. O that reminds me, I'll just drop this link for my favorite video lecture on the matter full of visualizations, 13 parts, "Imaginary numbers are real" https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703G3KJXapKkNaF https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703G3KJ... If I had it my way the distinction would be straight and twisted.
swatcoder 2y ago
In reality, those kinds of names are generally not intended as some kind of trophy in the first place. It's more organic. They just grow out of colleagues, speaking amongst themselves, referring to a fellow colleague's particular idea or elaboration. They all share a common base understanding of their field, many know of the colleague directly, and all know how to look something up if they know the colleagues name and gist of the idea. And so that's how they refer to it. Once in a while, these so-named insights prove really important or lasting -- after the fact -- and the name continues to stick because it's the one everybody was using. Meanwhile, most of the time, the insights just kind of fade back into the baseline body of knowledge and either don't break out at all or evolve through some collaborative work that earns a more formal name.
harperlee 2y ago
On the other hand, trying too hard to shoehorn semantic descriptions on names ends up with pathological cases (yes, chemistry, I’m looking at you!). Jokes apart, words are symbols that even if they have some semantics through etymology, in general they are quite arbitrary. I’d rather go with outlandish names that help mnemonics, if I were to choose. Names from people can serve that purpose; I still remember what a Kohonen map is, back from Uni, because of the childish resemblance with “cohone” (Andalusian for cojones), and a silly joke from a close friend.
- threatofrain 2y ago
  But if we choose words that are famous names, they are far less likely to be systematically used as a building block. And woe be to us if that individual invents too many things, because then the meaning of their name will be too ambiguous.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  There's no winning with chemistry. It's either 2-ethyl-cis-alpha-nonsenium, or it's "the sonic hedgehog domain". It's like you get a choice between math hell or cartoon hell.
idle_zealot 2y ago
> I'm already frustrated that we're stuck with "boolean" as the most fundamental of all data types. We do have another name for it. "Bit." You could probably roll out a new programming language today that uses something like `let shouldUpdate: bit = true;` or without blowing too much of your novelty budget. Or `u1`, if you wanted to allow arbitrary integer sizes.
- xen0 2y ago
  I think 'bit' risks confusing storage with the type (a Boolean is often stored using at least a byte, not a single bit).
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I had a math teacher who warned us: > If you don't give your creations good names, they might name them after you. From his tone it was clear that this was something to be avoided. I don't know whether too late to retcon existing names but let's try to do better going forward.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

I think two of the absolute worst names of them all are "dynamic programming" and "memoization". Don't get me wrong: I'll write you a 0-1 knapsack using DP in a hurry without any problem but it's just crazy that it's called "dynamic programming". I don't care about the justification for the term "dynamic programming" nor for the term "memoization". They are just plain wrong. Honestly compared to these two, "Bloom filter" sounds reasonable. Heck, if "dynamic programming" had been called "Bellman programming" and "memoization" had been called "Mitchie memo" (by the name of their respective inventors), it would be less confusing. So maybe, after all, that "Bloom filter" isn't that bad. Had we let the author pick a name, maybe he'd have picked "ephemeral spectrum" or something like that. Yeah. I think naming after the name of the inventor is far from the worse actually. And it kinda gives credit where it's due too.

taeric 2y ago
To be clear, my complaint here is that we stopped calling it Bloom's filter, and shortened that to Bloom Filter. At least Hoare's sort was shortened to "quick sort". :D We can leave it as named after someone, but that is a lot easier to understand if you keep the possessive. Plank's constant is a good one, in that vein.
antonjs 2y ago
The story of why it is called dynamic programming is pretty great: https://conversableeconomist.com/2022/08/24/why-is-it-called-dynamic-programming/ https://conversableeconomist.com/2022/08/24/why-is-it-called...

deleted 2y ago

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