←back to thread

330 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.29s | source
Show context
plorkyeran ◴[] No.46237424[source]
> grep (global regular expression print), awk (Aho, Weinberger, Kernighan; the creators’ initials), sed (stream editor), cat (concatenate), diff (difference). Even when abbreviated, these names were either functional descriptions or systematic derivations.

If you asked someone unfamiliar with unix tools what they thought each of these commands did, diff is the only one which they would have even the slightest chance of guessing. It's ridiculous to complain about "libsodium" and then hold up "awk" as a good name.

replies(15): >>46237555 #>>46237769 #>>46238238 #>>46238337 #>>46238800 #>>46238821 #>>46238937 #>>46239204 #>>46239290 #>>46240333 #>>46240524 #>>46242479 #>>46243231 #>>46243495 #>>46244061 #
1. ezconnect ◴[] No.46242479[source]
The problem with current naming is it now using common names like coffee and it's hard to search for them or relate to them. At least the old Unix naming are kinda unique and sometimes means something. Unlike today.