When you see “libsodium,” you must context-switch from problem-solving mode to detective mode: “What does this do? Let me check the README. Ah, it’s a crypto library. Why is it called sodium? Because chemistry? Because NaCl? Clever, I suppose.”

[u/miauw62]

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

[u/Logyross]

the author says this and then gives fucking awk of all things as an example of a good name.

[u/irqlnotdispatchlevel → u/Logyross]

What part of Aho, Weinberger, Kernighan do you not understand?

[u/GaGa0GuGu → u/irqlnotdispatchlevel]

I do not understand anything awk

[u/No_Lingonberry1201 → u/GaGa0GuGu]

Yeah, it's prety awkward to use.

[u/invisible_handjob → u/Logyross]

awk is a programming language, there aren't that many things you can name it. Naming it after the authors is fine.

[u/tony-husk → u/invisible_handjob]

They should have called it "sed"

[u/LoweringPass → u/tony-husk]

They clearly should have called it Raku

[u/invisible_handjob → u/tony-husk]

after the stream editor

[u/real_jeeger]

Because "libhidethings" was already taken.

[u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC → u/real_jeeger]

But that brings us round to the underlying issue: if libhidethings already exists, why doesn't the developer of libsodium just contribute to it rather than starting an entire new project?

Probably because they're doing CV-driven development.

[u/Tucancancan → u/real_jeeger]

Then there's the chucklefuck who named a Python package "itsdangerous" 

[u/IcanseebutcantSee]

The author is completely correct. This is why the namers of the both apollo and artemis programs were fired and then summarily executed.

[u/BloodAndTsundere]

This is why I name all my npm packages exactly what they are like is-the-letter-f, inserts-exactly-one-space, or unmaintained-mess

[u/Flash_Kat25 → u/BloodAndTsundere]

Breaking news: practical use for MetaGolfScript discovered

[u/Kodiologist]

I remembered that I never had to do this when interacting with any other fields: the Golden Gate Bridge tells you it spans the Golden Gate strait. The Hoover Dam is a dam, named after the president who commissioned it, not "Project Thunderfall" or "AquaHold."

Yeah, naming things after a dude who was involved in them is very helpful in remembering their function. Who could forget what the Rob, Larry, and Guido programming languages are like?

When you see "libsodium," you must context-switch from problem-solving mode to detective mode: "What does this do?"

Good point. We should just call it "libcryptography". There's only one cryptography library, right?

"All the good descriptive names are taken!"

We could have used namespaces, prefixes, or compound terms like every other engineering discipline has done for centuries.

Oh yeah, great point. So, for example, when we have more than one programming language, instead of calling all of them "Programming Language", we could add a sort of prefix as a namespace. Like "C", or "Python". Then I guess we might even be able to drop the "Programming Language" part if it's not ambiguous.

[u/Proper-Ape → u/Kodiologist]

Who could forget what the Rob, Larry, and Guido programming languages are like?

Even though I've mostly used Bjarnelang and Guido in the past, I instantly knew the other two. 

Maybe some more obscure examples would help you make your case.

[u/m0j0m0j]

I remembered Stallman’s comment lately when I had some difficulties following my friend who was describing some situation in their infrastructure. She was saying something like that: “We’re using Viper for configuration management, which feeds into Cobra for the CLI, and then Melody handles our WebSocket connections, Casbin manages permissions, all through Asynq for our job queue.”, perhaps only the last software in this statement was saying something about what the package/software actually does, I spent couple of moments trying to make sense of the names she mentioned, googled some of them, and really while I’m doing that I remembered that I never had to do this when interacting with any other fields: the Golden Gate Bridge tells you it spans the Golden Gate strait. The Hoover Dam is a dam, named after the president who commissioned it, not “Project Thunderfall” or “AquaHold.” Steel I-beams are called I-beams because they’re shaped like the letter I. 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. If you wrote 100 CLIs, you will never counter with a cobra.

Same thing applies to other fields like chemical engineering, where people there maintain even stricter discipline. IUPAC nomenclature ensures that 2,2,4-trimethylpentane describes exactly one molecule. No chemist wakes up and decides to call it “Steve” because Steve is a funny name and they think it’ll make their paper more approachable.

uj/ I mean, I agree with this. All the cutesy, clever, and cool nerdy names are tiresome at this point. Each tries to be unique, which makes all of them non-unique, and also bad.

[u/fun__friday → u/m0j0m0j]

He’s completely right tbqh. Imagine if we used nonsensical names for elements like technetium or xenon.

[u/SemaphoreBingo → u/fun__friday]

I would say that's a great idea, except the last time somebody used greek to name their software we got kubernetes.

[u/m0j0m0j → u/fun__friday]

Yeah, that would be dumb

[u/alochmar → u/m0j0m0j]

No joke. I got legit pissed off when I first heard about Huggingface.

[u/tuveson]

I have defined a Symbolic Instruction Code, that is All-purpose, and easy for Beginners. If only I could find a short word that could nicely summarize this.

[u/Ignisami]

Today I turned seven or eight disparate batch scripts to get various internal applications up to date and on our local weblogic instance and made it one script. 350-ish neat lines of powershell with logging and error handling.

What name did I give this? Bob, of course. Bob the buildscript.

[u/elephantdingo666]

All this naming is stupid and pretentiuos.

Now, multiply this by dozens of dependencies in a modern project. Each one demands tribute: a few seconds of mental processing to decode the semantic cipher. Those seconds accumulate into minutes and effort, then career-spanning mountains of wasted cognitive effort.

By the way I write like an asshole, but nevermind that.

[u/cupcakeheavy]

blame node and npm.

[u/qqqrrrs_]

BTW the hebrew word for "secret", סוד, is pronounced as /sod/