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Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

(larr.net)
311 points todsacerdoti | 28 comments | 11 Dec 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.538s | source | bottom
1. wpollock ◴[11 Dec 25 18:50 UTC] No.46235391[source]▶
If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called "emacs" does?
replies(9): >>46235570 #>>46235591 #>>46235597 #>>46235599 #>>46235627 #>>46235628 #>>46235650 #>>46235698 #>>46239342 #
2. d3Xt3r ◴[11 Dec 25 19:01 UTC] No.46235570[source]▶
An emergency bootable/rescue tool for Macs!
replies(1): >>46236095 #
3. pesus ◴[11 Dec 25 19:02 UTC] No.46235591[source]▶
I still think of the short-lived Apple eMac when I read it.
replies(3): >>46235622 #>>46237840 #>>46238864 #
4. ErroneousBosh ◴[11 Dec 25 19:02 UTC] No.46235597[source]▶
Uses eight megs of RAM and constantly swaps?
5. ralferoo ◴[11 Dec 25 19:02 UTC] No.46235599[source]▶
Maybe a geekbench from yesteryear. Back in the mists of time it was apocryphally known as "eight megs and continually swapping". But I guess that's a couple of orders of magnitude out nowadays.
6. morshu9001 ◴[11 Dec 25 19:03 UTC] No.46235622[source]▶
It's funny how they sold that into 2006, with a CRT still
replies(1): >>46237789 #
7. jolmg ◴[11 Dec 25 19:04 UTC] No.46235627[source]▶
It's still to his point:

> Even when engineers get creative, there’s logic: a butterfly valve actually looks like butterfly wings. You can tell how the name relates to what it actually defines, and how it can be memorable.

Editor MACroS still has a logic. It isn't just random.

replies(2): >>46235732 #>>46239152 #
8. ctoth ◴[11 Dec 25 19:04 UTC] No.46235628[source]▶
> If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called "emacs" does?

Hmm, this looks like a nonsense word, but sometimes words look like nonsense when you write them backwards, maybe it's a scame?

9. gibsonsmog ◴[11 Dec 25 19:05 UTC] No.46235650[source]▶
Based on the article headlines I've seen over the years, I don't think emacs users know what emacs does except "yes"
10. 9rx ◴[11 Dec 25 19:08 UTC] No.46235698[source]▶
If you didn't already know, what do you think a tool called a "combine" does?

Combine things? Nope. Its purpose is to separate things...

Its not just the software industry.

replies(3): >>46235765 #>>46235786 #>>46236161 #
11. wat10000 ◴[11 Dec 25 19:10 UTC] No.46235732[source]▶
A butterfly valve is a category of thing. The corresponding word for emacs would be "editor." That is entirely descriptive: an editor edits.

Picking a specific butterfly valve randomly from an internet search, I find one called the FNW FNWHPA1LSTG24.

Product types and categories get generic names, specific products often get weird names. It's true in just about every field.

replies(1): >>46235937 #
12. rkomorn ◴[11 Dec 25 19:12 UTC] No.46235765[source]▶
I'm conflicted because you're not entirely wrong (that it's not just the software industry), but the name is because the combine combines steps that used to be separate.

It's not actually badly named.

replies(1): >>46236038 #
13. wat10000 ◴[11 Dec 25 19:14 UTC] No.46235786[source]▶
More to the point, what does a John Deere S7 600 do, or a 310 G-Tier, or a Z515E ZTrak? Emacs is an editor. That part is descriptive: an editor edits. The product name is not expected to describe what the product is. The general product category is what does that.
replies(1): >>46235839 #
14. 9rx ◴[11 Dec 25 19:17 UTC] No.46235839{3}[source]▶
> The product name is not expected to describe what the product is.

There are some exceptions, but the agriculture machinery industry has actually gotten pretty good at making the names useful, with reasonable consistency across brands. S7 600: 600 tells that it is a class 6 combine, which is a value farmers understand as it pertains to the combine's capacity. For tractors, the John Deere 8R 230 sees 8 indicate a large row-crop frame, and 230 indicates a 230 HP engine. A New Holland T7.180 is, you guessed it, a medium row-crop frame with a 180 HP engine.

It may look like nothing to outsiders, but there is a lot of useful information encoded in there once you know what to look for.

replies(1): >>46237801 #
15. jolmg ◴[11 Dec 25 19:23 UTC] No.46235937{3}[source]▶
Someone was probably the first to call their valve a butterfly valve.

Emacs can also be taken to be a category of editors. There are multiple emacs-derived editors.

16. 9rx ◴[11 Dec 25 19:31 UTC] No.46236038{3}[source]▶
> I'm conflicted

That's why I chose that specific example! What fun would there be in you not having to think about it?

17. Izkata ◴[11 Dec 25 19:36 UTC] No.46236095[source]▶
"Mac OS through email" was what popped into my mind. No idea how that would work.
18. bigstrat2003 ◴[11 Dec 25 19:42 UTC] No.46236161[source]▶
Technically it's a "combine harvester" as far as I know, which is more intuitive. Though in practice everyone calls it a "combine".
replies(2): >>46236350 #>>46236374 #
19. ◴[11 Dec 25 19:59 UTC] No.46236350{3}[source]▶
20. 9rx ◴[11 Dec 25 20:02 UTC] No.46236374{3}[source]▶
Technically it is "combine". Originally it was known as a "combined harvester-thresher", which is maybe what you're thinking of, but that was soon shortened to "combine" and it has stuck ever since.

"Combine harvester" showed up in some places later where context was needed to figure out what "combine" means, but it was seemingly only for context. "Combined harvester-thresher harvester" is pointlessly redundant.

21. amelius ◴[11 Dec 25 21:58 UTC] No.46237789{3}[source]▶
They had to because the RDF was based on CRT technology, originally.
replies(1): >>46238856 #
22. wat10000 ◴[11 Dec 25 21:59 UTC] No.46237801{4}[source]▶
Useful if you already know the basics of what it is. My point is that "S7 600" by itself doesn't tell you anything if you don't have some knowledge of the product already. The knowledge that it's a combine is separate. Similarly, "emacs" tells you nothing if you don't know it, but the generic term "editor" is descriptive.

Software doesn't generally encode product attributes into the name the way 230 means 230 horsepower and such, but that's because software doesn't really have things like that to put in the name in the first place. Most software doesn't have specific variants like that, and software that does is almost always differentiated on feature set rather than numbers.

replies(1): >>46237928 #
23. 9rx ◴[11 Dec 25 22:09 UTC] No.46237928{5}[source]▶
Software often puts the version in the name. Which is the same as the S7 designation in the case of said combine. S7 is just a restyled S7x0 series combine, which was the successor to the S6x0 series.

It's not a perfect system. Before the S6x0 was the 9x70STS series, after the 9x60STS series, and the 9x50STS series. You can find a version number in there, albeit not a perfectly sequential one. Although that's nothing new. Windows 3.1 turned 3.11, 95, 98. iOS 17 turned 26. You get the picture.

24. accrual ◴[11 Dec 25 23:32 UTC] No.46238856{4}[source]▶
What is RDF in the context of eMacs? I searched but I just get "Resource Description Framework" or "Reality Distortion Field".
25. accrual ◴[11 Dec 25 23:32 UTC] No.46238864[source]▶
Same! I had eMacs in school and loved them, they were my first exposure to the array of characters "emac".
26. mvdtnz ◴[12 Dec 25 00:02 UTC] No.46239152[source]▶
That's as good as random.
27. gowld ◴[12 Dec 25 00:22 UTC] No.46239342[source]▶
Constantly Swapping its Eight Megabytes, of course.

https://google.com/search?q=Eight+Megabytes++And+Constantly+...

replies(1): >>46241979 #
28. Oreb ◴[12 Dec 25 08:17 UTC] No.46241979[source]▶
“Emacs Makes Any Computer Slow” is another one I remember from back in the days.