CSS gets a new logo and it uses the color `rebeccapurple`

> The color was originally going to be called beccapurple, but Meyer asked that it instead be named rebeccapurple, as his daughter had wanted to be called Rebecca once she had turned six. She had said that Becca was a "baby name," and that once she had turned six, she wanted to be called Rebecca. As Eric Meyer put it, "She made it to six. For almost twelve hours, she was six. So Rebecca it is and must be."

Wasn't expecting tears over a colour

..in 2014 in honor of Eric Meyer's daughter, Rebecca, who passed away at the age of six on her birthday from brain cancer.

I’m not sure. I think it is what makes human. The details are that what make life worth living instead just the endless turning of the cogs. Besides, if you don’t like it, just use the rgb value.

It was not his proposal and it was not in his power to approve it. Community proposed and endorsed it.

He only requested a change from becca to rebecca.

Software is a part of human culture. All of human culture is intertwined.

I think finding a meaningful way recognise a significant contributor in a way that doesn’t really impact anyone is something to be encouraged. I imagine that most people would use the hex code anyway and only devs/designers would see the name in their tooling.

I can’t see how to apply logic to naming a colour. It’s fundamentally a perceptual and, dare I say it, emotional process.

I also think your comment is uncharitable and tone deaf.

It's the sort of emotions over logic we need more, you mean.

You actually thought of that and then also wrote it down. You had to intentionally press "reply" to make the internet see this message.

I am stunned!

It is sad to see such a comment come from someone with such high karma and seniority. I hope that it is not reflective of the ethos of this community.

I feel we have way too little humanity in tech. With the advent of AI, that does not promise to improve.

You look at the monstrosity that is the CSS spec(s), filled to the brim with horrible ideas like floats, the various overcomplicated positioning modes that no mortal can hope to ever fully understand, and undefined behavior left and right in general. And the "bloat" you end up singling out is... an addition to the otherwise 147 entries long color name table.[0]

That's just bizarre.

[0]: at least when I was implementing it: https://git.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/tree/351f2f51322c2fa291772c... perhaps there's more now...

Not to mention, we have a bunch of names that are just jokes, bad puns, random references, or idle wordplay.

C# is named because it’s a step up from C++, which is one better than C, which is the next thing after B.

Python is just an arbitrarily chosen name referencing a comedy troupe.

Linux is Linus’s copy of Minix, which is a minimal Unix, which is based off of Multics, which is a pseudo-initialism.

We have names honoring the dead; Pascal, Ada, Darwin.

We can name one color in one spec in honor of one person’s dead child.

It is neither a burden nor out of character for the field. If you genuinely believe it is a problem, I ask that you step back and reflect on why you truly believe it is.

I mostly agree, but not for code lexical choices. The comment obviously lacks empathy and would be better unsung another tone and not words like graveyard.

Names are easier to learn and remember when universal. We know memorization works with associations and Chocolate, PaleTurquoise and Aqua are great for that. Chartreuse and DodgerBlue aren’t. While I can personnaly relate to the first the second is totally alien. Both lacks a bit more universality IMHO.

Absolute universality isn’t achievable but I stand that is a usefull direction to head to.

I’m deeply sorry for Eric’s daughter and gratefull for his work. I’m sure there’s other ways to honor them.

PS: thanks for the HN post, now I can relate to RebeccaPurple!

I agree with not switching from "master" to "main" in git branch parliance. (The music industry didn't stop "mastering" albums, with good reason -- it's a technical term that refers to technical authority, which is a concept worth keeping.)

But I don't think this thread is the place for such a discussion. Technical authority and "woke" culture arguments are one thing, but we're talking here about honoring Erie Meier (a seminal figure in CSS history) and his daughter by adding a named color (basically an alias) to CSS and using it in the logo. That's worth doing simply out of love and honor for Eric, his wife and family, and his daughter.

Just to clarify: my comment was not related to Erie Meier at all.

I do not mind the rename from beccapurple to rebeccapurple either.

Not even this. There's no "logical" argument against it. The CSS color names are largely arbitrary and always have been (e.g. "indigo" is a shade of purple, when IRL indigo is the plant that produces the dye for blue jeans). Color names in general have been arbitrary since long before Newton coined ROYGBIV and decided to use "blue" to mean what we call "cyan" today.

It's an attitude that presumes that we can apply logic to all walks of life, which ironically is an inherently illogical stance.

Your list includes all 140 CSS named colors, so as per CSS Color Module Level 3, it is exhaustive. Your list has duplicates which are valid because both American and British spellings are recognized, e.g. "darkgray" and "darkgrey".

If it is not limited to CSS, then you are missing X11 colors (around ~256), for example, although some overlap with CSS colors.

If interested, Gpick can serve as a starting point.

What’s ur browser called?

I’m sorry that it seems this comment was dinged. It was (in my opinion) a reasonable one, and not delivered in an attack fashion.

I can only speak for myself, but I inject a great deal of “humanity” into my technical work.

I write software that Serves a pretty marginalized and sidelined demographic. Not many folks are willing to do the type of work that I do.

I certainly don’t do it for the kudos. I don’t think most of the folks here, would care, and some, might actually hate me for doing the work.

I do it, because I actually have a personal stake in the work, and because I care -deeply- about the people that use my software. Whenever I design an app, I keep in mind the folks that use it, and ensure that it delivers something that they need (not what I think they need; what they actually need). My work is informed by a mental model that I have, imagining the software being used by people, not by it projecting my brand, making money (it’s free), or salving personal insecurities.

I’m quite aware that this is not the norm, in the industry, but I have worked for companies that kept a laser focus on the end-user experience, which involves a great deal of “getting into their heads.”

I did not consider your comment to be an attack in any way.

My issue boils down to some completely wanting to change IT terminology because of "emotions" which happens because people do not consider the context in which it is embedded.

I meant your comment. It seemed to be unpopular.

> Recently, we renamed the "master" branch to "main," which was seen by some as a step toward inclusivity. But does this truly contribute to meaningful progress?

In that case, probably not since the world master has multiple meanings. However, as you noted, it is common to use master/slave terminology in the hardware world. That terminology is definitely problematic because we are humans. We are affected by human history and we are affected by social constructs. Something similar can be said about killing processes. It is also worth noting that people noticed that terminology was problematic long before the current social environment, probably because it affects a much broader range of the population. (For example: I don't see that terminology used much outside of Unix.)

It quite reminds me of Richard Stallman's reply on an email list asking people to refrain from posting about the birth of a baby on a technical mailing list.

http://www.art.net/studios/hackers/hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-d...

The last two sentences of that quote hit me so hard.

Yeah, that's the main oversight of the OP that makes them look silly.

There was no logic to the naming scheme. It was all arbitrary, and the names came in waves from various sources like house paint colors, Crayolas, and the whims of people behind various implementations.

If they replaced '#663399' with 'rebeccapurple' maybe they'd have a point.

Everytime I see the content dissappear from being flagged and moderated away, I feel poorer and wonder what it was that I can no longer be allowed to read. How aggressively should messages be moderated on HN? After I had myself been unreasonably sensored in other discussions, this very active moderation is giving me serious concerns about HN. Robot spam should be moderated, or illegal things, but do we really need edgy comments hidden from view? I've seen a lot of magnanimous, wise and empathic responses on some otherwise cutting comments, a lot of goodwill here on HN. Do we really need the heavy hand of censors to protect us from offensive speech???

If you want to see it, turn on I See Dead Posts.

I keep mine off, because, for the most part, I don't mind not seeing the trolls.

In this case, the chap made a point that many people (including myself) disagree with, but in a fashion that I think is right in line with the way we should deal with each other.

I just think people downvote posts they disagree with, or because they have some animus with the poster (I have a couple of downvote stalkers, myself, and it's sometimes amusing to see which posts they hit).

Yeah wow, I love that this is forever encoded into the standard now. A lovely tribute. It's always been one of the few CSS default colors I actually like too (alongside "cornflowerblue").

I'm not sure it's fair for me to comment on "the ethos of this community," but I remember when rebeccapurple was added to the spec and there were commenters here bemoaning adding complexity to the spec for no benefit.

I'll say "You will find more than zero people here who don't really seem to consider humanity and tech overlapping domains."

Thank you, I was blissfully unaware of show dead after all these years of being here.

It’s not censors. It’s fellow users collectively voting on what we want in our community and what we don’t. (Didn’t downvote or flag it as it was dead when I got here)

I'm sobbing like a baby while my 5yo twins are watching TV nearby. That is such a 5-going-on-6 decision to make, which just drives the whole thing home for me and I can't handle it right now.

I've always loved the existence of "rebeccapurple", but I somehow missed that part of the story. Her color being immortalized in the CSS logo (even if it changes years from now) is so incredibly beautiful to me.

Isn't "PHP" a play on words?

I'm told that it stands for "PHP Hypertext Processor." A recursive acronym.

Originally it was personal home page

Good taste, I also think cornflowerblue is a very balanced color

If you want to see comments from trolls, bigots, and shadowbanned users turn the showdead option on. I have it turned on and maybe 1% of comments are worth vouching for.

This color is beautiful, the deleted comment was likely nasty, and Stallman was right.

Nuance;

The terminology itself is not inherently problematic; it is essential for us, as humans (as you noted), to be capable of compartmentalizing and recognizing the context in which terms are used. Language often carries multiple meanings, and our ability to discern the appropriate meaning within a specific context is a critical cognitive skill.

Neutralizing a term or altering it solely for the sake of political correctness (or whatever you may call it) is not the most effective approach when dealing with terminology that has long-standing and widespread usage. Such changes can create unnecessary confusion, disrupt established workflows, and detract from efforts to address more impactful systemic issues. Instead, fostering education and promoting contextual understanding can better equip individuals to interpret terms appropriately without discarding their historical or technical significance.

> Something similar can be said about killing processes. It is also worth noting that people noticed that terminology was problematic long before the current social environment, probably because it affects a much broader range of the population.

People should ideally not be affected by such terminology, as it is clearly used within a technical context with no intention of causing harm or evoking negative connotations[1]. The phrase "killing processes" for example, is a metaphorical term that accurately describes terminating a running operation in computing. Allowing neutral, domain-specific terminology to become a source of offense risks overextending sensitivity and detracts from the importance of addressing genuinely harmful language or actions in broader societal contexts. As I have previously mentioned, fostering an understanding of the technical intent behind such terms can help mitigate unnecessary emotional responses.

Altering long-standing and widespread technical terminology for perceived correctness is often futile, as individuals who lack contextual understanding or are overly sensitive could potentially take offense at ANY TERM. If anything, we should focus on education and promoting linguistic contextualization that ensures terms are understood within their intended meaning, preserving clarity, historical significance, and functionality.

[1] master/slave terminology has absolutely nothing to do with slavery, for example.