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Origin of 'Daemon' in Computing

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236 points wizerno | 2 comments | | HN request time: 1.106s | source
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twobitshifter ◴[] No.41895073[source]
Do you pronounce it as demon or like Matt Damon?
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dcow ◴[] No.41895179[source]
I believe it officially is pronounced the same as demon. But colloquially I hear a lot of (and sometimes find myself using) “damon”.
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whartung ◴[] No.41895528[source]
I’m in the Matt Damon camp. Always pronounced it that way, never really gave it much thought. Just seems “right” to me.
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JadeNB ◴[] No.41895827[source]
And now we can perhaps hash out whether the `lib` in `/usr/lib` is pronounced with a long or short 'i'. I hope I'm not the only one who pronounced it the first way with no real thought, and never noticed until I heard someone else say it with a long 'i' that that was obviously the logical pronunciation.
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dpassens ◴[] No.41896449[source]
Surely the logical pronunciation is the way you'd pronounce it in library, so a long 'ai' rather than any kind of 'i'? Though I personally always use the short 'i'. I was going to justify that by saying it's the same as /usr/bin, but that's also short for binaries, so should also be an 'ai'.
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1. macintux ◴[] No.41896696[source]
I've been pronouncing it with the short 'i' for 30 years, but mainly, possibly only, in my head.

In 1998 I started a new job, and my boss pronounced "URL" as "earl". That threw me for a loop, had to fight my way through our first conversation before I figured out what he was saying.

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2. bitwize ◴[] No.41896770[source]
I pronounce API as "appy", which sometimes draws quizzical looks (people think I'm using next-level cutesy slang for "application"). But I never could do the "earl" thing. Or "sequel".