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Comment by andrewchambers | Hacker News Reader

You seem to specialize in willful ignorance and bike shedding to me.

While you specialize in presumptuous ad hominem attacks against strangers on the internet. I like my vice better.

I can only go off what you wrote, stating you are deliberately ignorant. I was just reiterating what you proudly said.

Do you really think saying you are a specialist, yet won't read about the topic you specialize in because you are scared of a benign name is reasonable?

I forgot to mention the ridiculous hyperbole comparing 'cockroach' to racial slurs.

Perhaps to a large fraction of relevant stakeholders, the name is a signal of project immaturity and perhaps poor judgement.

Additionally, even if you aren't personally bothered it, most would be aware that others feel this way, which certainly creates an uphill battle for the tool and diminishes the prospect of a vibrant ecosystem building up around it.

This is a red flag for anyone who might be considering including CockroachDB as an important part of their stack on any long-running project

Do you discard such factors?

My point is that the name isn't benign. And my post was deliberately somewhat hyperbolic. I actually have read a bit about Cockroach, and if I saw a growing ecosystem that seemed relevant to my work, I would pursue it more.

But as others have pointed out, the name creates unnecessary conflict and discomfort. In a world of perfectly rational humans, it wouldn't matter. In the real world, it makes it harder to get stakeholders on board. That's why I made the comparison to ethnic slurs. "F_U_DB" might be the greatest storage system imaginable. It doesn't change the fact that the name alone is going to create extra unpleasant work. (EDITED to fix an error)

"Somewhat hyperbolic" and "the complete opposite of truth" are not the same thing.

There are no such things as "perfectly rational humans" and if there were they would be rational and would not experience discomfort because of a name because that's irrational. A rational human would see the name as clefer if anything since cockroaches are quite enduring.

It was not an ad hominem attack. He criticized you willfully not learning about the area you say you specialize in. It is completely valid criticism as your reasons for doing it are ridiculous and what you said looks very unprofessional.

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