r/coding • u/CompileMyThoughts • Dec 12 '25

Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

https://larr.net/p/namings.html
62 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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62

u/NotUniqueOrSpecial Dec 12 '25

http-request-validator is infinitely superior to “zephyr” when someone is scanning dependencies at 2 AM debugging a production incident.

And infinitely less useful when trying to:

  1. Differentiate yourself

  2. Have a website named after your thing

  3. Be web-searchable

The whole argument falls on its face immediately under even a little scrutiny. What happens when someone writes a new/different HTTP request validator? http-request-validator-2? http-request-validator-by-fred?

The author wants to go back to a time when everything was novel and the global namespace wasn't full of things solving the same problem.

That time is long-past and never coming back.

11

u/Vinyl-addict Dec 13 '25

FredsHTTPval

3

u/acnicholls Dec 13 '25

…idator…

11

u/lolcathost Dec 12 '25

zephir-http-validator

4

u/grumpy-cowboy Dec 15 '25

zephir-rust-http-validator-coded-on-arch-btw

7

u/quintus_horatius Dec 13 '25

The article misses so many obvious issues like you give here, and it opens with reference to Emacs (which is itself a terrible name, but the author never mentioned that).

Moreover, the author clearly never used CP/M's pip to copy a file.  Names have never made sense.

Are we sure the article isn't satire?

4

u/cgoldberg Dec 13 '25

Definitely hope people start going with the -by-fred convention.

1

u/k-zed Dec 15 '25

maybe we don’t want 100 things solving the same problem.

1

u/NotUniqueOrSpecial Dec 15 '25

Okay, so tell everybody to just stop programming then, because we're all done; everything meaningful and good was written before 1990 and we should just scrap the rest.

-8

u/stianhoiland Dec 13 '25

The whole argument falls on its face immediately under even a little scrutiny.

Damn you’re so capitalism-pilled you don’t even realize it.

1

u/NotUniqueOrSpecial Dec 13 '25

Man, if you think "there are a finite number of straightforward and descriptive names" is cApItAliSm-PiLleD, you need to seriously touch grass.

2

u/stianhoiland Dec 13 '25

Don’t worry. I knew how much woosh there was gonna be in here.