8 ms·
I think many of you in the Hacker News crowd will recognize this problem that I'm yet to find a solution to myself: mkdir [blinking cursor] Then 30 minute
by augustl 14y ago
I think many of you in the Hacker News crowd will recognize this problem that I'm yet to find a solution to myself:
mkdir [blinking cursor]
Then 30 minutes passes and you didn't end up making that thing anyway since you got distracted while thinking up a name for it.
- namank 14y agoI have designated an in-prog folder and call it 'dev'. Everything in dev is strictly modifiable.
- JasonFruit 14y agoWorking in a folder called dev feels wrong to me. It's like having a folder called 'bin' that is a trash bin.
- jfoutz 14y agofoo? bar? qux? metasyntacticvariable? potato? name it something. mv works if you need to change it.
- VMG 14y agoit also should be somewhat unique so that sed -ie can do its job
- pistoriusp 14y agoI always start with a codename. And for the longest time I've used the surnames of foreign scientists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_scientists
- nostromo 14y agoWe use Pokemon. The reason? Nobody gets too attached to the name Jigglypuff.
- GotAnyMegadeth 14y agoThat's a great idea I might steal. I'll go through the names in dex order, as I happen to know at least the first 151 in order... Also I'm pretty sure that they make new Pokémon faster than anyone starts projects...
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoDon't bet on it. http://ajf.me/imagedump/screenshots/ihavewaytoomanyprojects.gif http://ajf.me/imagedump/screenshots/ihavewaytoomanyprojects....
- mkr-hn 14y agoYou can switch to Digimon if you run out of Pokémon.
- ry0ohki 14y agoI guess you haven't seen this... http://evilbrainjono.net/pages/startup-or-pokemon.py http://evilbrainjono.net/pages/startup-or-pokemon.py
- fishtoaster 14y agoI once came up with a great name for a product I was hacking on with my roommate, so we used that name internally. By the time we'd been coding for a few weeks, though, what the product actually was had evolved and the name was no longer relevant (despite being scattered throughout the codebase, the github repo, the directory structure, etc). Ever since then I've been a codename fan. I go for liquor names (since I work at home across from the booze shelf)- I'm currently building Frangelico.
- vetler 14y agoThere's always Finnish lakes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Finland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Finland Might be difficult to pronounce for some, though.
- dugmartin 14y agoI've used this list multiple times for personal project codenames: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_the_Americas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_the_Americas
- sdoering 14y agoFunny. I use mythological figures. Right now it's "metatron", and "delphi"...
- jorde 14y agoThese are so bad for a software project that they might even work for a codename. And this coming from a Finn.
- chimeracoder 14y agoEven better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Minnesota http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Minnesota
- xnxn 14y agoI'm torn between Operation "Big Spunk" and "Big Sucker".
- saw-lau 14y agoNorse gods here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_gods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_gods
- morsch 14y agoHaving to type in Gerðr or Þrúðr would get old pretty fast. ;)
- leonsp 14y agoGerthr. Thruthr.
- alexjeffrey 14y agonow I know where tumblr and flickr got their names.
- daeken 14y agoI generally use either the first thing that pops into my head (sometimes it's just obvious) or the song I'm listening to at the time, either name or a snippet of lyrics. SteelBreeze, ClubThing, Tain, Ronin, Arienette, etc. Works wonders.
- forrestthewoods 14y agoI use coffee shops or espresso company names, often local to Seattle. The list is quite limitless. Zoka, Vivace, Rococo, Velton, Olympia, Lighthouse, Ladro, and so on it goes.
- sspiff 14y agoI pick hostnames from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
- anarchitect 14y agoTo take the head-scratching out of the start of a project, and to give apps personality, we use surnames of film directors.
- yitchelle 14y agoWhen I was with HP calculation division in the early 2000s, the project names came from Star Wars / Star Trek characters. Why? Because with we were working SciFi (SCIentific FInancial) calculators.
- dkersten 14y agoI used to use Japanese foods, so I've had directories named sushi, sashimi, miso, karasumi and so on.
- gilgoomesh 14y agoIf I have to work on another project named after Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben, I'll quit this damn company!
- vacri 14y agoCharacters from Bananaman. Not my choice, and I can't wait for the list to exhaust... though I like the idea of calling the devs VM test server 'zookeeper'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananaman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananaman
- alanctgardner2 14y agoThe Apache foundation beat you to it! http://zookeeper.apache.org/ http://zookeeper.apache.org/ It's actually a clever name for what they're doing
- mikeash 14y agoJust be careful which scientists you use and in what context. Picking the wrong one could get you sued: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Apple_Computer http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Apple_Computer
- mncolinlee 14y agoYou'll never run out of microbrew beers. I mean for naming. I do run out of the real thing while coding.
- rurounijones 14y agoAs the famous, slightly modified from original, saying goes: "There are only two hard things in computer science. Cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors."
- rooshdi 14y agoI find just calling it app_number and moving on helps. I used to go in circles with names, until I realized how much time and sanity I was wasting. Spending more time on developing the product helps me understand it's core value better and, consequently, potential names to communicate that value effectively to new users.
- quarterto 14y agoThere are only two hard problems in Computer Science: Cache invalidation, and naming things.
- quarterto 14y agoAnd off-by-one errors.
- 46Bit 14y agoOff-by-one errors only affect good programmers. Otherwise you just add enough of such errors that all the under- and over-summing cancels out. 7 years ago, when I was a new programmer, I did use a technique like that to fix some JavaScript. I feel brave confessing that.
- evolve2k 14y agoJust I case FYI: the off by one errors is part of the joke of the statement.
- valentinu 14y agoThe reference: http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html
- peteretep 14y agoI know what you're thinking. You're thinking: "How can CPAN help me with this problem?" Answer: http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Acme%3A%3AMetaSyntactic&mode=all http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Acme%3A%3AMetaSyntactic&...
- mef 14y agoWithout knowing my way around perl, how would I use this to generate a name from one of those categories?
- peteretep 14y agoPerl modules (almost) always come with a _Synopsis_ section in the documentation, which describes how to use them. Here's a direct link to the one for `Acme::MetaSyntactic::soviet`: http://search.cpan.org/~jforget/Acme-MetaSyntactic-soviet-0.03/lib/Acme/MetaSyntactic/soviet.pm#SYNOPSIS http://search.cpan.org/~jforget/Acme-MetaSyntactic-soviet-0....
- barking 14y agoI don't get to name many projects. But when I'm naming procedures I want the name to be self-documenting without being too long. Frequently I get exasperated and name it blah or sdfbdhfs!
- devopstom 14y agoI usually start projects on github, and allow the random name chooser to make that decision for me.. "Great repository names are short and memorable. Need inspiration? How about drunken-nemesis."
- mm_alex 14y agoLittleBigPlanet, our PS3 game, was (is) called 'ps3test1'. the sequel, LBP2, is... also called ps3test1. that project really was our first attempt to bring up a devkit, probably with a rotating cube. the project, and compiled output, on every platform, is called 'pc.elf' (or .vcproj or .exe or whatever) SIGH there's an inverse correlation between awesome-ness of directory name and chance-of-shipping, in my experience.
- scrumper 14y ago> there's an inverse correlation between awesome-ness of directory name and chance-of-shipping, in my experience. Sackboy's law? It's absolutely true. Thanks for sharing that about LBP: it's great to hear that my nominative inertia is shared by such high company.
- roryokane 14y agoI just give projects a plain, descriptive name, not worrying too much at first about using the exact, correct words. I have projects with names like “Boggle word list”, “cost matrix solver”, “def_init-initializer-type DRY enabler”, “Ghost Assistant”, and “recursive spiraling dots animation”. I don’t publish my projects until I’ve worked on them for a while, so I don’t mind if they’re not perfect at first.
- nemoto 14y agoYou could steal ideas from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and several other Distro for giving codename to their release. For example, in Debian, they take a character name in Toy Story for their codename. In Ubuntu, they take an animal name in alphabetical order.
- FigBug 14y agoI've gotten asked a lot where the name Miranda IM came from and I honestly have no idea. I was creating a new solution in Visual Studio and I needed a name. I remember it took under 10 minutes to come up with, I was browsing a bunch of name lists and I came across 'Miranda' and I thought that sure is a strange / unusual name, I'll use that. Turns out it's a fairly common name. I still think it's a good name for the product. I remember when I was working on ACDSee, the original author said, "If I knew it was going to become popular, I would have picked a better name." The company originally made catalog software, and a Co-op student made ACDSee as a side project. It's sustained the company for almost 20 years.
- debacle 14y agoGood translate is your friend. Pick a language you don't know, and have at it: "picture site" => "irudi_gune" (basque) I find that Basque, Portuguese, and Welsh produce very good names.
- ufo 14y agoAs someone from Brazil, I wonder what kind of words would sound weird to an English speaker like that. I would have thought that most words would be recognizeable, given that English also has its fair share of Latin words.
- debacle 14y agoPortugese is far enough from Latin that many of the English cognates are not immediately recognizable. "Sangue bom," for example, is not visually translatable to English.