4 ms·

Naming is a big part of programming, you'd expect software to have good descriptive names.

Supermancho 10mo ago
How do you discriminate between 2 different things that ostensibly have similar features, but do it in different ways without getting very large names? What if you modify software or just part of it to make it something distinctively new, should it keep the name or add to it? What if I revert that non-trivial feature and add a different non-trivial one. Now what is it? I would hope the author realizes the core counterpoint when re-reading "We’re using Viper for configuration management, which feeds into Cobra for the CLI, and then Melody handles our WebSocket connections, Casbin manages permissions, all through Asynq for our job queue" - because the real names, are the roles the tools play. The implementation name is incidental and amorphous, since you can make wild changes to software, rendering the name without much utility beyond a project label. Project labels are necessarily opaque, for the same good reasons software is. The ideals are more important than the details. They are a conflux of interests and plans, not a market label. If market labels were fixed to functionality, the world would be worse off for obvious reasons of practicality and marketability. Ironically, Stallman is completely comfortable with PostgreSQL which is semantic context adjacent, charitably. It describes a small element of the project (a synthetic SQL syntax), not the project itself.
mbesto 10mo ago
"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things."
- MrDarcy 10mo ago
  And off by one errors.
- casper14 10mo ago
  "And off by one errors"
selcuka 10mo ago
> you'd expect software to have good descriptive names Like Microsoft Word?
tempest_ 10mo ago
eh, in 2025 SEO ( Whatever the jargon is for LLM) is as important or perhaps more important so that you can search and find documentation and issues etc
swiftcoder 10mo ago
I think this runs into the intersection of the "code is art" and "code is a tool" crowds. I like to name my API methods with a little whimsy too...
- rahoulb 10mo ago
  I remember writing a function to convert a string from snake case to camel case and calling it `humpify`. And another that would take a string and locate the constant with that name called `constantinople`. But then, this is ruby and it's known for its unusual naming. Plus both also had sensible/boring aliases and they were for internal use only.

How do you discriminate between 2 different things that ostensibly have similar features, but do it in different ways without getting very large names? What if you modify software or just part of it to make it something distinctively new, should it keep the name or add to it? What if I revert that non-trivial feature and add a different non-trivial one. Now what is it? I would hope the author realizes the core counterpoint when re-reading "We’re using Viper for configuration management, which feeds into Cobra for the CLI, and then Melody handles our WebSocket connections, Casbin manages permissions, all through Asynq for our job queue" - because the real names, are the roles the tools play. The implementation name is incidental and amorphous, since you can make wild changes to software, rendering the name without much utility beyond a project label. Project labels are necessarily opaque, for the same good reasons software is. The ideals are more important than the details. They are a conflux of interests and plans, not a market label. If market labels were fixed to functionality, the world would be worse off for obvious reasons of practicality and marketability. Ironically, Stallman is completely comfortable with PostgreSQL which is semantic context adjacent, charitably. It describes a small element of the project (a synthetic SQL syntax), not the project itself.

mbesto 10mo ago

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things."

MrDarcy 10mo ago
And off by one errors.
casper14 10mo ago
"And off by one errors"

selcuka 10mo ago

> you'd expect software to have good descriptive names Like Microsoft Word?

tempest_ 10mo ago

eh, in 2025 SEO ( Whatever the jargon is for LLM) is as important or perhaps more important so that you can search and find documentation and issues etc

swiftcoder 10mo ago

I think this runs into the intersection of the "code is art" and "code is a tool" crowds. I like to name my API methods with a little whimsy too...

rahoulb 10mo ago
I remember writing a function to convert a string from snake case to camel case and calling it `humpify`. And another that would take a string and locate the constant with that name called `constantinople`. But then, this is ruby and it's known for its unusual naming. Plus both also had sensible/boring aliases and they were for internal use only.