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Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

(larr.net)
330 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | 11 Dec 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.195s | source
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jameshart ◴[11 Dec 25 18:53 UTC] No.46235444[source]▶
> naming things after random nouns, mythological creatures, or random favorite fictional characters is somehow acceptable professional practice. This would be career suicide in virtually any other technical field.

Really? Have you specced a microprocessor lately? Seen what pharmaceuticals are called? How polymer compound materials get named?

replies(2): >>46235523 #>>46238797 #
1. causalmodels ◴[11 Dec 25 23:25 UTC] No.46238797[source]▶
Brand name pharmaceuticals are sort of a different thing. Brand names must comply with the naming guidelines of the FDA, European Medicines Agency, and HealthCanda simultaneously. In practice, this makes it tricky to use actual words. So my companies adopt an 'empty vessel' naming approach. The empty vessels are nonsense words that (1) invoke an emotion (wegovy is a good example), (2) can be trademarked, and (3) it can survive brand pressure.