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Thanks :-P I got excited for a moment that someone on HN was doing something in my former field... nope, just another web thing. Is it just me or is that a bit

by kyzyl 14y ago

Thanks :-P I got excited for a moment that someone on HN was doing something in my former field... nope, just another web thing. Is it just me or is that a bit of an odd name? For me when I see MRI I think Magnetic Resonance Imagining, but is that just because of my field?

hmottestad 14y ago
Nope. It's probably not the smartest thing to call your tech. Those who know what it is will know, everyone else will think MRI (magnetic). I think a good guideline for choosing an acronym is how many hits it already has on google. MRI: 73,800,000
- colbyh 14y ago
  Yeah, and while we're at it god forbid someone name a language after a colloquialism for a popular brewed and caffeinated drink. Or the island the beans for said drink sometimes come from. Or a snake that sometimes lives on that island... If I told my parents I worked in Ruby all day they'd think I started a career in precious gem mining, who cares? "Those who know what it is will know..." are exactly 100% of the people that care about Matz's Ruby Interpreter and therefore this article.
  - hmottestad 14y ago
    Ruby isn't an acronym. Neither is Java. JVM is though, and the entire first page on google for JVM is about the java virtual machine. Had they called it MRI for java viRtual MachIne, it would still not be all over the front page.
- splitrocket 14y ago
  There are 17,576 possible 3 letter acronyms. I would argue that its awefully hard to find one that isn't overloaded. Worse even when your acronym is comunityn generated. "Matz' Ruby Interpreter" likely wasn't named by matz himself.
Argorak 14y ago
MRI is more of a nickname. The software is actually called "Ruby", but thats confising nowadays.
steveklabnik 14y ago
> Is it just me or is that a bit of an odd name? It's because there are a ton of Ruby implementations. MRI is the name for the official one that Matz works on. If he said "Ruby's method caches," he would be wrong, this is about details of MRI specifically, and not, say, JRuby or Rubinius. Given how much hackers love TLAs, and that there are what, 2600 of them, it's inevitable that there will be some amount of namespace clash. Ruby people reading a Ruby blog post aren't going to be confused about it, and while others may have momentary confusion, a few seconds later it's pretty clear what's being discussed. Terms of Art are hard.
famo 14y ago
Lol, because of your "field"
- kyzyl 14y ago
  Heh, for once I actually didn't intend the pun ;-)
danielharan 14y ago
"just another web thing" really isn't accurate when talking about the Ruby interpreter.
- kyzyl 14y ago
  You're right, of course. Another comment fallen victim to the Ruby==Rails laziness fallacy :-)

by kyzyl 14y ago

hmottestad 14y ago

Nope. It's probably not the smartest thing to call your tech. Those who know what it is will know, everyone else will think MRI (magnetic). I think a good guideline for choosing an acronym is how many hits it already has on google. MRI: 73,800,000

colbyh 14y ago
Yeah, and while we're at it god forbid someone name a language after a colloquialism for a popular brewed and caffeinated drink. Or the island the beans for said drink sometimes come from. Or a snake that sometimes lives on that island... If I told my parents I worked in Ruby all day they'd think I started a career in precious gem mining, who cares? "Those who know what it is will know..." are exactly 100% of the people that care about Matz's Ruby Interpreter and therefore this article.
- hmottestad 14y ago
  Ruby isn't an acronym. Neither is Java. JVM is though, and the entire first page on google for JVM is about the java virtual machine. Had they called it MRI for java viRtual MachIne, it would still not be all over the front page.
splitrocket 14y ago
There are 17,576 possible 3 letter acronyms. I would argue that its awefully hard to find one that isn't overloaded. Worse even when your acronym is comunityn generated. "Matz' Ruby Interpreter" likely wasn't named by matz himself.

Argorak 14y ago

MRI is more of a nickname. The software is actually called "Ruby", but thats confising nowadays.

steveklabnik 14y ago

> Is it just me or is that a bit of an odd name? It's because there are a ton of Ruby implementations. MRI is the name for the official one that Matz works on. If he said "Ruby's method caches," he would be wrong, this is about details of MRI specifically, and not, say, JRuby or Rubinius. Given how much hackers love TLAs, and that there are what, 2600 of them, it's inevitable that there will be some amount of namespace clash. Ruby people reading a Ruby blog post aren't going to be confused about it, and while others may have momentary confusion, a few seconds later it's pretty clear what's being discussed. Terms of Art are hard.

famo 14y ago

Lol, because of your "field"

kyzyl 14y ago
Heh, for once I actually didn't intend the pun ;-)

danielharan 14y ago

"just another web thing" really isn't accurate when talking about the Ruby interpreter.

kyzyl 14y ago
You're right, of course. Another comment fallen victim to the Ruby==Rails laziness fallacy :-)