4 ms·

Microsoft has a habit of naming similar (or not) things the same as each other. VS and VS Code; Powershell and Windows Powershell; Copilot and Github Copilot; A

by cobbal 2y ago

Microsoft has a habit of naming similar (or not) things the same as each other. VS and VS Code; Powershell and Windows Powershell; Copilot and Github Copilot; Azure, Azure DevOps, and probably other Azure things. I'm not sure what internal incentives in the company lead to such terrible naming practices.

mdaniel 2y ago
Oh then it's even worse than I knew: I had no idea there was Windows Powershell, too, and had (evidently erroneously?) through they just renamed Copilot to GitHub Copilot
- mook 2y ago
  My understanding is that Windows PowerShell is the version that shipped with Windows, i.e. PowerShell up to 5.4. The new PowerShell is just the newer versions (6.x/7.x), which doesn't ship with Windows and is meant to be cross-platform (i.e. runs on not-Windows). But that means dropping support for stuff that they can't make cross-platform. Same with .net — Framework (up to 4.8 I think) is Windows, newer stuff (Core) is cross-platform. So this Framework release from Wine is for stuff that ties heavily into Windows, which is why Microsoft gave it to them in the first place.
Uvix 2y ago
The different categories are worth considering separately. PowerShell is more than just "similar" to Windows PowerShell; it's a slightly-backwards-incompatible new version with cross-platform support. With cross-platform support, the old name didn't make sense any more; and presenting it as a "new" product solved the issue of people complaining when they upgraded and things broke. (Same thing they did with .NET.) I don't know what else they could have done here. "Copilot" is Microsoft's name for their LLM functionality across all their products. Question in, slop out. That's entirely consistent. I'm not sure what difference you're even seeing between "Copilot" (which Copilot?) and "Github Copilot". Azure DevOps was them renaming an existing product to coopt a better-known brand name. Same with Visual Studio for Mac. (Visual Studio Code and Azure Data Studio were similar - although those weren't renames but rather a new product trying to steal mindshare.) This is the only category I'd really call "terrible".
osigurdson 2y ago
>> internal incentives in the company lead to such terrible naming practices I suspect overthinking is the root cause.
billforsternz 2y ago
After using .NET and COM as names for important platform products I half expect Microsoft to announce a new platform called .ORG or maybe just ORG. Visual ORG for .NET with COM support.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Not to mention .EDU, the educational version of COM, and .IN-ADDR.ARPA, the module for looking up other modules by UUID.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    the .MIL product is rumored to be in widespread use, but still classified.
balamatom 2y ago
Nothing internal about those incentives (though, happily, at least some people at Microsoft still find that sort of thing in poor taste). "The purpose of a system is what it does", as famously observed by a man named Beer. Microsoft is no stranger to what's very transparently a bastardized form of nominative determinism, meant to sabotage the playing field by confusing generic and branded nomenclature. It's the opposite process to genericizing a trademark: you take as many random words as you can get away with, and turn them into brand names while nobody is looking. And then... you are suddenly everywhere they look. So, a clear totalizing influence; its purpose: to tombstone a consumer product into the early termination of any attempt at independent thought - until thinking remains purely the domain of machines (that everyone is forced to trust) and illiterates (that nobody believes). Never succeeds for reason of some natural law or other, but it's a pain in the ass, a.k.a. a great motivator of economic growth, especially in epochs where imagination is frowned upon, like our present one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark Far from limited to Microsoft, either. Though theirs are particularly crude - someone else mentioned COM and .NET. Well, why would you even name a proprietary runtime platform something as plainly idiotic as "dot net" - except to mount an attack against the networked commons? Take "Windows", for fuck's sake - at least they didn't name a statistics package that. What about "Meta", and their "Messenger" - remember when all chat apps were called messengers? Privatize the entire "Alphabet" - then nationalize it, then repeat a buncha times! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness These kinds of organized attacks against language are nothing new. They just take a lot of entrenched mindshare to pull off in the first place, so are usually the domain of actors of nation-state and transnational caliber. One of their side effects is that people become technically unable (not just unwilling) to learn from immediate history: while the spectrum of observable reality remains covered by a network of interlocking notions, the boundaries between notions shift. So, the most important nuances become impracticable to translate between those established mental models that precede the attack, and any newly elucidated ones. So a lot of wheels end up having to be reinvented. Sometimes entire bicycles. Like I say, great driver of economic growth - just like many other more obviously horrible things.

by cobbal 2y ago

mdaniel 2y ago

Oh then it's even worse than I knew: I had no idea there was Windows Powershell, too, and had (evidently erroneously?) through they just renamed Copilot to GitHub Copilot

mook 2y ago
My understanding is that Windows PowerShell is the version that shipped with Windows, i.e. PowerShell up to 5.4. The new PowerShell is just the newer versions (6.x/7.x), which doesn't ship with Windows and is meant to be cross-platform (i.e. runs on not-Windows). But that means dropping support for stuff that they can't make cross-platform. Same with .net — Framework (up to 4.8 I think) is Windows, newer stuff (Core) is cross-platform. So this Framework release from Wine is for stuff that ties heavily into Windows, which is why Microsoft gave it to them in the first place.

Uvix 2y ago

The different categories are worth considering separately. PowerShell is more than just "similar" to Windows PowerShell; it's a slightly-backwards-incompatible new version with cross-platform support. With cross-platform support, the old name didn't make sense any more; and presenting it as a "new" product solved the issue of people complaining when they upgraded and things broke. (Same thing they did with .NET.) I don't know what else they could have done here. "Copilot" is Microsoft's name for their LLM functionality across all their products. Question in, slop out. That's entirely consistent. I'm not sure what difference you're even seeing between "Copilot" (which Copilot?) and "Github Copilot". Azure DevOps was them renaming an existing product to coopt a better-known brand name. Same with Visual Studio for Mac. (Visual Studio Code and Azure Data Studio were similar - although those weren't renames but rather a new product trying to steal mindshare.) This is the only category I'd really call "terrible".

osigurdson 2y ago

>> internal incentives in the company lead to such terrible naming practices I suspect overthinking is the root cause.

billforsternz 2y ago

After using .NET and COM as names for important platform products I half expect Microsoft to announce a new platform called .ORG or maybe just ORG. Visual ORG for .NET with COM support.

DonHopkins 2y ago
Not to mention .EDU, the educational version of COM, and .IN-ADDR.ARPA, the module for looking up other modules by UUID.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  the .MIL product is rumored to be in widespread use, but still classified.

balamatom 2y ago

Nothing internal about those incentives (though, happily, at least some people at Microsoft still find that sort of thing in poor taste). "The purpose of a system is what it does", as famously observed by a man named Beer. Microsoft is no stranger to what's very transparently a bastardized form of nominative determinism, meant to sabotage the playing field by confusing generic and branded nomenclature. It's the opposite process to genericizing a trademark: you take as many random words as you can get away with, and turn them into brand names while nobody is looking. And then... you are suddenly everywhere they look. So, a clear totalizing influence; its purpose: to tombstone a consumer product into the early termination of any attempt at independent thought - until thinking remains purely the domain of machines (that everyone is forced to trust) and illiterates (that nobody believes). Never succeeds for reason of some natural law or other, but it's a pain in the ass, a.k.a. a great motivator of economic growth, especially in epochs where imagination is frowned upon, like our present one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark Far from limited to Microsoft, either. Though theirs are particularly crude - someone else mentioned COM and .NET. Well, why would you even name a proprietary runtime platform something as plainly idiotic as "dot net" - except to mount an attack against the networked commons? Take "Windows", for fuck's sake - at least they didn't name a statistics package that. What about "Meta", and their "Messenger" - remember when all chat apps were called messengers? Privatize the entire "Alphabet" - then nationalize it, then repeat a buncha times! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_distinctiveness These kinds of organized attacks against language are nothing new. They just take a lot of entrenched mindshare to pull off in the first place, so are usually the domain of actors of nation-state and transnational caliber. One of their side effects is that people become technically unable (not just unwilling) to learn from immediate history: while the spectrum of observable reality remains covered by a network of interlocking notions, the boundaries between notions shift. So, the most important nuances become impracticable to translate between those established mental models that precede the attack, and any newly elucidated ones. So a lot of wheels end up having to be reinvented. Sometimes entire bicycles. Like I say, great driver of economic growth - just like many other more obviously horrible things.