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Comment by kozak | Hacker News Reader

Here in Ukraine it would be very hard to get adoption of a programming language that is named after a Russian military base. This is the rare case where bad naming choice really hurts. No matter how good is the language, you will have to hear and pronounce that name many times a day, and even associate yourself with it (e.g. "a Kotlin developer" in your resume). Not something to be taken lightly.

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Nobody cares about the politics of Indonesia when dealing with Java programmers either.

At first I read this as "Nobody cares about the politics of Indonesia" and found it quite offensive on multiple levels. Somehow, my mind just stopped processing input! Thankfully I reread your statement, but boy do I need caffeine – clearly!

One might say you need... java.

With regards to the potential politics of naming things I think it's a tricky thing. When a brand has been established it's already too late and what started as "Naming something after a Russian island" ends up being problematic.

We're too global in software development to release a brand renamed in certain regions to solve this the traditional way, so libraries and languages have to be extra careful when dealing with naming.

Honestly, though, I would think we could all get past it by considering that maybe names are just names and we should be above the politics.

A simple heuristic: if a developer has a hissy fit over the project names of Coq, Brainfuck, or Stalin, don't work with them.

Ah, but is there a line? Where does it get drawn?

Without explicitly naming them, once you get into the realm of Stalinism or the holocaust, surely it wouldn't take too much imagination to come up with a few names too unsavoury even for you?

I don't see a line. Though if there's an element of humor I see an orthogonal anti-line that will annihilate any attempts at line-drawing.

I'm sure you could find a name that if not met with indifference or a laugh would elicit from me an eyeroll or a statement like "come on, that's dumb" or maybe "that's just asking to derail conversations" but I don't think you could 'trigger' me into a fit. (Of course you're welcome to try via email.) It's just a name.

Point taken, but the original point was being associated with the name, not throwing a fit. Having it on your CV/resume, for example. Potentially alienating clients because of words that stand out from the page in the wrong context. I can see a problem.

The point I responded to was maybe we should be above politics in names, to at least be capable of treating names with a professional indifference. To that end there's a simple test to see if someone you're considering working with believes that too. (Of course it's fully reversible, maybe the future will require passionate condemnation of names that might give offense in order to get hired.) For your point of unsavory associations, sure, but it depends on your expectations for audiences. What's the cost of association if no one throws a fit? What is alienation over a word if not a fit?

I can see a problem if you expect to pay that cost frequently when you bring up the word, and thus avoiding it, but if that's really the case it's worth wondering what other sorts of issues will come up that you don't expect when deciding to take the chance of alienation cost. If I made something as awesome as Stalin I'd put it on my resume, even if it resulted in periodic emails/comments about how insensitive a name it is. Even if some tech readers won't want to work with me because of it, I wouldn't want to work with them, so we're both happy, and we find that out before we actually try working together. I wouldn't put a 'I made Stalin' bumper sticker on my vehicle though. For a name like Kotlin, I really doubt Ukrainian programmers would be upset over it, it seems so absurd, but I can see the possible issue of the general public being sensitive about it in which case it's wise to only have the association in tech contexts.

> Of course it's fully reversible, maybe the future will require passionate condemnation of names that might give offense in order to get hired.

Pretty sure we're already at that point, for some industries/professions. Anything in tertiary education, certainly.

There is no line. Expression is turing complete. That you might not like something I say does not have any effect on my right to say it as a human being.

Obviously the names are tongue in cheek jabs. There's no language called Auschwitz, afaik, and even if there was, it would have as much right to exist as Java or Python or whatever.

You don't get to tell people what to name things just because you're offended. You get to be offended, that's it.

> You don't get to tell people what to name things just because you're offended.

Sure you do, and you get to say your reasons too, refuse to adopt something based on those reasons and try to persuade other people and organizations to accept your reasons. You even get to apply mild sanctions - like not buying things from them or discouraging others from interacting with the person who did the thing that offended you.

You just don't get to forcibly compel anyone. If they disagree with your reasons and don't care about upsetting you, you can't make them change.

It seems that a lot of people want not just freedom to offend with their speech, but also freedom from the reasonable consequences of offending (including responding speech), which is even less coherent than wanting freedom from offensive speech.

This, thank you. So many people seem to think that freedom of speech == freedom from consequences. The reality is that freedom of speech == freedom from government consequences.

Kind of. That's the law of course. But freedom of speech, in America at least, is also a principle of our Republic. We should all strive to encourage this freedom. To attempt to quash someone from speaking their mind is morally wrong, and is actually un-American.

Did someone tell people what to name things? All I saw was a person speaking their mind about the choice for a name.

At the same time, while you have the right to name something whatever you want, others do also have the right to tell you it's a terrible idea.

Your freedom to say what you want doesn't come with freedom from the consequences of saying it.

I genuinely struggle to think of a name that I would object to. I mean you could "name" your language a manifesto that I wouldn't want to be associated with, sure, but a name that's clearly (from context) acting as a name is just a name.

There are living people whose relatives were brutally killed by Stalin. He was responsible for more deaths than Hitler, if you ignore Hitler's role in initiating the wars.

It's reasonable to distance yourself from a bad name, just as many people have chosen to rename things that were named Isis.

Can we please not raise topics like this here?

In fact, ukrainians don't give a damn about few nationalists like this for whom it "hurts" and will never consider an origin of the language name, not to mention that idiotic [island name - country name - evil status] associativity. Most people in the world are sane, please don't get tricked into internet-bs easily.

Predictably, a third of this discussion has now gotten derailed into bikeshedding about names, yet again.

If you haven't seen it, go watch the episode from the TV animated Dilbert show, "The Name" - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1afila_dilbert-s01e01-the-...

I looked it up, and Kotlin is an island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_Island) 1,000km north of Ukraine. Is it a case like Alcatraz, where the location has become idiomatically synonymous with the facilities?

Kotlin is a place where https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt was founded. You can say that Kronstadt become idiomatically synonymous with the facilities. Not too sure about the Alcatraz, but Kronstadt is the pride of Russia (and I doubt many people would be happy to see it being compared to a prison-island, lol)

I have no issues with Kronstadt. Kronstadt also is the germanic name of Brasov in Romania. Lovely city. There are probably many other Kronstadt's. It just means "Crown City".

It's worth remembering that different names have different connotations to different people. And that different things may have the same name. If you are trying to market something you obviously have to keep in mind the connotation to the name to the target demographic. And if someone outside your target demographic complains about the name you probably don't care. On the other hand, in the land of open source those connotations are meaningless. Creators of open source tools don't really rely on marketing.

> Here in Ukraine it would be very hard to get adoption of a programming language that is named after a Russian military base.

This sounds really stupid, considering that many Ukrainian programmers are already using JetBrains products and that punishing a great company for the actions of politicians is kind of sad.

Would you work in a programming language called Hitler?

Any multinational company needs to do their research before deciding on a name.

Hitler is universally offending and I would question the motives of its creators. OTOH, I couldn't care less if a language would be called gomix or ibne (same word in Turkish) or fag.

> Hitler is universally offending

It's not though, and there are many cultures in the world where people are so far removed from what happened that they don't have an understanding of why people would be upset about it. See:

http://kotaku.com/man-opens-nazi-cafe-baffled-that-it-pisses...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Cafe

Plus numerous other examples

Equating a programming language named after a Russian island to Hitler is a real stretch, unless you think that everything Russian is like Hitler. It's just an island and a language named after it.

Sure, but that's not really answering the question is it.

I think I wouldn't necessarily put that I use Hitler on my CV, due to the negative feedback I would receive from others not in the field.

But on the other hand, barely anyone in the United States has even heard of the island Kotlin, so I'd feel more comfortable doing that.

> I think I wouldn't necessarily put that I use Hitler on my CV, due to the negative feedback I would receive from others not in the field.

But Kotlin IS NOT equivalent to Hitler AT ALL, Kotlin is like if you named your programming language "Texas" and somebody objected to the name, because "there are defence contractors located in Texas".

maybe the appropriate US version is "Pearl Harbour" - how would you feel about a language called PearlHarbour, and can see a situation where a (non-technical) hiring manager would take issue with that appearing on your CV?

> maybe the appropriate US version is "Pearl Harbour"

That doesn't quite work—Pearl Harbor was a US base, so most Americans would be okay with it. The negative associations we have with it are what was done to it & the people who served there. We're not angry or upset about the base itself.

What about Brainfuck?

What does the name of an individual have to do with that of an island?

Wayland: I think it's the name of some America place. Should afghans, syrians, viets, [put whatever country the US invaded] stick to X11 because of this?

I think it depends on more nuance than that: I do think it would be reasonable for people to avoid a language called Guantanamo because of the name associations. Wayland happens to be a place in MA but I'm from near there and even I had no idea or prior associations with that name because of the place.

Kotlin is not the military base, it is an island. Would you object to a language named "Cuba"?

Well there is this: https://www.cuba-platform.com/ So if you want to object you can do so already.

And Guantanamo Bay is a bay besides also having a base there.

I know nothing of Kotlin's specific name associations, but I don't think "it's the name of a place, therefore its fine" is valid in general. I think "Sandy Hook" would be an inappropriate name right now, while "Wayland" is fine, despite both being towns in the same general region of the world: one name invokes something specific in peoples minds and the other does not.

Its sort of like how its generally not a good idea to be named "Isis" right now, despite having plenty of harmless associations unrelated to ISIS. You might be named after the Egyption god but you are still invoking an association that you don't really want to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_changes_due_to_the_Islami...

Yes I would.

I have a friend who's called, quite lovingly so, Hitler in our circle. The nick has nothing to do with any of his beliefs or opinions (we wouldn't be friends if it did). The icing on the cake is my kids talking about "uncle Hitler", that's just laugh-your-way-to-coma material.

BTW, there's Stalin language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_(Scheme_implementation)

I would, as long as it can replace Java.

Well, you already have java formal verification tool named Bandera http://bandera.projects.cs.ksu.edu/people.shtml (which name is obviously choosen by Oksana Tkachuk, one of the tool authors)

As a native Spanish speaker I'm not aware of any negative connotations of the word bandera. In Spanish it just means "flag", so any other meaning is hard to google for. What am I missing? Just curious.

one (Google Images): https://www.google.ru/search?q=bandera+una+unso&num=20&newwi...

two (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera

If you want to piss off a clinical... eww, not a russian, but a post-soviet russian-speaking citizen of Russian Federation (with a little putin in his head), you may place a Stepan Bandera photo on your userpic and name youself as ukrainian nationalist.

If you want to piss off a real ukrainian nationalist, you may use a Stalin phono, or any other communist leaders.

From the point of sight of normal people, both of these sides is braindead. "A plague on both your houses".

It's important to emphasise, that Kotlin is a name of island. Not a military base. That's it.

Kotlin is just the geographic name of the island. A "military base" (Baltic fleet admiralty headquarters, which is military, but not "base") is located there, but it's location is the fortified city named Kronstadt.

I am a pro-Ukrainian Russian, and I know many Jetbrains employees, who are cool and bunch of hackers and totally apolitical. Don't worry, it is kosher. :)

I think the effect on adoption will actually be small. Most Ukrainian developers won't realize or won't care the island the language is named after houses a military base. Going by my experience, they will also have few qualms about using a language controlled by a Russian company. (Note I am not judging them positively or negatively, just predicting their behavior.)

>Here in Ukraine it would be very hard to get adoption of a programming language that is named after a Russian military base.

Well, except if you are an Ukrainian of Russian descent and root for the (ex)home team...

Russian descent appears not to be a necessary condition for a Ukrainian to "root for the home team". (Neither is it sufficient. But it does correlate.)

Which is actually not the case for most Ukrainians of Russian descent:

  Most of ethnic Russians in Ukraine signed for the 
  Ukrainian army, fighting against Putin’s invasion, 
  against the same Russians that came from the other side.

(from http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/05/con.... Note the source is Kasparov, who is not an entirely unbiased source where Russia is concerned ;))

>Note the source is Kasparov, who is not an entirely unbiased source where Russia is concerned

To say the least...

Well, it's a big question - what is real "ethnic" russian. It's like an "ethnic USA citizen".

Less so though, as USA was from the onset a nation of hodgepodge nationalities from everywhere -- and without a much older local culture (except of the Indians, which were genocided away).

It was the constitution/law that held US together as a nation instead of a shared history/culture (well, except WASP culture, which is on the wane).

That's sick. Kotlin is an island. The fortress is named Kronstadt.

That's the biggest BS I've ever read on HN.

I dunno, this seems reasonable compared to the complaints against CockroachDB

It's named after an island, don't see why it's reasonable.

Whereas it's completely reasonable to object against naming something after an insect?

Yes, it is pretty normal to have phobia of e.g. insects. If you have phobia of Russia on the other hand, you might want to get checked.

The Cold War would like a word.

I bet Cockroach Island doesn't have a great tourism industry.

I think opposite, because it's been created in Russia it's going to be very popular in Ukraine

If they open source it, maybe someone should fork it called Kiev.

Kotlin is open source: https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin

It is open sourced, Apache 2 license https://github.com/jetbrains/kotlin

Ironically, the name "Kiev" would be no less offensive becuase this spelling of the name implies that this is a Russian city, not a Ukrainian one. The official and correct spelling is "Kyiv", see http://kyiv.of-cour.se/ for explanations why.

Ironically, the name "Kyiv" would also be no less offensive since it is written in Latin characters non native to Ukraine instead of the Ukrainian alphabet, which is a derivative of the Cyrillic alphabet. The official and correct spelling is "Київ"

>Ironically, the name "Kyiv" would also be no less offensive since it is written in Latin characters non native to Ukraine instead of the Ukrainian alphabet, which is a derivative of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Pedantically it would be much less, even none at all, offensive, since nobody will care whether a programming language's name is not written in Cyrillic, since the latin alphabet is the default for such names anyway.

Totally not. Many newly-installed signs in Kyiv are bilingual, in Ukrainian and in English. We have official rules for transliterating Cyrillic into Latin which the government uses.

I'm pretty offended that you call my home Великобританія too.

> The official and correct spelling … I think "official" and "correct" are two different things especially in countries where social networks and other internet services are prohibited like Ukraine.

Social networks, as a whole, aren't prohibited in Ukraine. Only a couple russian internet services are blocked as part of sanctions against Russia. Because of the... you know... war.

Also Kot means faeces in German.

And MongoDB means RetardDB which on the other hand actually is a reasonable name.

Kotlin is just an island. This name known from 17th century and have germanic-scandinavian origin - Kettusaari - Ketling inseln - Ketlingen - Ketling - Ketlin - Kotlin.

It's bad, but the name could be worse: https://www.cockroachlabs.com

I don't see anything wrong with the name. It seems like an implication of being as resilient as a cockroach.

I don't think so. The main concern for someone with anti-russian stance would be using Russian tech at all, not it's name. But I don't remember JetBrains ever doing anything to align themself with state politics and it's not like one has to buy anything from them to use Kotlin. So I don't see it as a major factor.

Yet both Ukrainians and Russians love Rammstein, right?

> Here in Ukraine it would be very hard to get adoption of a programming language ...

just for curiosity, do you still have access to Internet and https://github.com/jetbrains/kotlin? I have heard that social networks and many other services in Ukraine are prohibited by the government (after prohibiting other media like TV and newspaper) and now people are installing VPN and other tools by using experience of China to overcome these obstacles. Is it so?

Ukrainian here. Where did you hear that? Don't read news there anymore, they manipulate you. Ukraine introduced sanctions against russian businesses on its territory. As part of those sanctions, websites of three major russian IT companies have been blocked. That included Yandex (which is very similar to google, also has a lot of web services), and a couple of russian social networks.

I can say the same. Those services that were banned are either the most outrageous war propaganda outlets, or honeypots that gather intelligence information (imagine half of all Ukrainians communicating via a social network that is fully controlled by the enemy).

> Those services that were banned are either the most outrageous war propaganda outlets

That's what most totalitarian states say when they limit the access to the information.

> Imagine half of all Ukrainians communicating via a social network that is fully controlled by the enemy

Oh, yeah, I see now. You were being sarcastic, isn't it?

Yeah because russian military strategy is based on photos and videos teenagers share in vk.com

Did you try to check Wikipedia before writing this? Language is named after island near StPetersburg where JetBrains main office is located (proof http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/breslav-1932...)

It has nothing to do with military bases. Just a memorable, concise name which sounds good in many languages.

Exactly, how will this language triumph without the important support of Ukrainian developers? The 0.64% of all developers!

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