Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

The author is vastly overestimating the general legibility and familiarity of things they happen to know well and are used to.

Boring names are also very generic, by definition, and thus often harder to remember. Especially when there are 10 other similar tools. Is it sql-validator, sql-schema-validator, schema-validate, db-validator, or god knows what else?

Edit: I am in favor of better “sub titles” / descriptive slugs / and so on. As well as names that are a hybrid of creative and descriptive. Sqlalchemy is a good example.

Why isn’t there a command line utility called “whatisthis” with a standard protocol that allows tools to give a brief description of what they are?

It could be extended to package managers as well. E.g “pip whatisthis foo_baz”.

Shit we should create this…

This might not be exactly what you mean by a CLI app called "whatisthis", but I have been using cheat.sh and the pattern below for a few years. It works really well!

curl cheat.sh/grep # fetches brief grep cheat sheet

The real trick is getting just enough meaning into the name to be helpful, while keeping it distinct. SQLAlchemy is a great example.

I called by zsh bookmark tool `tutu`, my idea was to make it sound like what it does.

- It helps you go TO places - The main command is `tu` because it is short, a homophone of "to", and wasn't already taken - Additional commands `tutu` (which does a `pushd` instead of `cd`) and `untu` (which is just a wrapper around `popd`) are short, memorable, and pronouncable.

All of those naming decisions were made with ergonomics in mind.

Was I successful? I like it. A few other people are using it and seem to like it, too.

To the extent that I was, I think it's because the name is meaningful enough while remaining distinct.

https://github.com/daotoad/tutu

> Why isn’t there a command line utility called “whatisthis” with a standard protocol that allows tools to give a brief description of what they are?

Cheekily, man?