Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by felixangell1024 | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

felixangell1024

The name "Corrode" doesn't seem very positive given the purpose of this program...

View on HN

It also mirrors the name "oxidation" that Mozilla uses to talk about adding rust code to firefox.

I find the name creative, kind of funny and all in all very good.

I guess you could say its ironic in terms of how I think of it anyway.

> ironic

I don't even know what is and what isn't a pun anymore.

Yeah, let's not tarnish this thread any further.

Tell us how you really FEel.

Only if you are talking about iron corrosion. If you own an aluminum Macbook, for instance, it was oxidized (or corroded) during manufacturing, on purpose. This protects the metal from further corrosion.

You could say it's what this project does.

Rust is a type of corrosion.

Ah very true. I interpret it as (from Googles define) "destroy or weaken (something) gradually." i.e. destroy/weaken the C code into Rust... Maybe it's just me, though.

They probably should've used a more specific term; like "Oxidant".

Exactly, _Corrode_ makes C code _rusty_!

Ironically though the name rust is from the species of fungi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)

Well, it's just building off the same (negative) connotations of "Rust", which I think was itself a questionable name, trivial though it might seem.

I've been looking at newer languages recently, and I see a lot of promise in Nim -- which renamed itself from Nimrod after users warned about what it connotes. Rust could take a cue.

Well, Rust isn't actually named after iron oxide. It's actually named after the fungus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)). Most people just don't know about the fungus.

When it comes to connotations, "what people know about" is more important than the intent.

When it comes to connotations, the one's associated with Rust are beyond negligible...

How so? For me, "rust" conjures images of a rusty nail, rust getting in your tap water, a machine in disrepair from rust, and becoming "rusty" at some skill.

And I don't think I'm alone.

And Python conjures images of dangerous snakes (and people getting killed by them), Go conjures images of that argument with my SO, when she told me "go!", C# conjures images of sharp objects like knives, and PHP conjures images of programming in PHP.

It's just a name, nobody really cares about rusty nails and rust in tap water when discussing Rust the programming language. And by nobody I mean nobody in the statistical significant sense.

It's really bikeshedding.

Just so we're on the same page, are you dismissing all relevance of PL names, or just the downsides of this particular one? That is, are you saying you wouldn't balk at naming a (enterprise-promoted) language something like Filth, Feces, Pubes, Jizz, or (Brain)fuck? Would those be "just names" too?

You're right that no language's name is perfect and immune from bikeshedding; however, the psychophysical mechanism of disgust works at a far deeper, extra-rational level than other negative traits. "Rust" evokes it, pythons don't.

I'm not sure if that's more positive..

Carbon doesn't corrode very well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com