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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

I remember listening to this when it was recorded and I still remember details from it years later – probably my favorite Changelog podcast ever. It's obviously very foolish to make software choices based on how much you like its creator as a person. But Richard Hipp comes off as a guy so likable that goshdarnit, I hope his little project succeeds. Jokes aside, though, I don't think it's entirely coincidence that SQLite, something that is so good and reliable, was made by someone who seems so conscientious and thoughtful.

Though I have to admit, I was and am still disappointed to learn that the official way to pronounce SQLite is "S-Q-L-ite", i.e. "like a mineral".

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Conscientiousness and empathy are rare commodities in software development. It's difficult for somebody to get out of their own head and consider a problem fresh, and it's not always personally rewarding to do so. It's also expensive, if you want to back it up with user testing.

You see it, even, in ostensibly public-consumption open-source projects, where the goal is clearly not merely to scratch one's own itch but to market the project for uptake for this reason or that. I feel like SQLite is a great example of what happens when a team is able to foster the kind of empathy to really understand how the user wants it to be.

Well, to be fair, it sounds like that it at least started out as a project where the programmer and the user were the same person?

I thought it was always pronounced "sequel-ite" personally

And I thought it was S-Q-lite. S-Q-L-ite makes sense though. Most consistent.

I say S-Q-Lite except I pronounce the S and Q in Portuguese and the rest in English...

Luckily I code on my own, so nobody hears this abomination out loud

I do the same thing. Maybe we should talk.

MySQL is the same way. A lot of people say My-sequel but I think its supposed to be my-ess-que-ell

We need a normal form for pronouncing and naming relational databases.

I’m half joking but it might alleviate people from being confused.

I thought the norm was to pronounce SQL as "sequel" in Microsoft products and "ES-QUEUE-EL" in every other context

The norm is to pronounce it by how likely you think you might get yelled at for trademark infringement by a holding company of the assets of an old aircraft company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley

The name confusion is all IBM's fault.

> Chamberlin and Boyce's first attempt of a relational database language was Square, but it was difficult to use due to subscript notation. After moving to the San Jose Research Laboratory in 1973, they began work on SEQUEL. The acronym SEQUEL was later changed to SQL because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Engineering Limited company.

So that trademark has been un-revivable since 2005... long past time to start saying "sequel" for real :)

I preferred to call it "Squeal Server."

Absolutely. Squealer for short.

I looked it up, you're right, it is officially my-ess-que-ell. This leads to another question, how do you pronounce "NoSQL"? I couldn't find a convincing answer on the web. I used to say "sequel" for everything SQL related but clearly I was wrong.

"red iss"

Noskul, rhymes with nostril

PostgreSQL is the fun one out because they officially say it is Postgres-Q-L.

The "it's always S-Q-L and never `sequel`" is IBM's fault and an early trademark infringement issue in computing. (IBM was told it couldn't call it "SEQUEL" by an aircraft company.)

I typically go with just "postgres" for phonetic pronunciation. Not sure how else it would be done; "postgres sequel?"

Postgres queue ell

I go with psql personally

genuinely not sure if you are joking or not, but that's not the same thing as postgres! :)

I've heard Postgres pronounced as if it were French. "Postgree."

I've heard that, but assumed it came from splitting up the name as "Postgre"+"SQL"; if you leave off the SQL part you get a word ending in E, and "postgreh" can't be right, can it? :)

Which is why I've also heard developers that either assumed the 'g' was silent or a transposition problem and you get "poster SQL", "postreg SQL", or worst of all "posgret SQL".

Somewhere, I believe in an HN comment, I saw a Postgres developer say that one of the biggest regrets of the project naming was capitalizing that "shared S".

i'm weirded out by the fact that i always use the “official” pronunciations for all these products

For anyone curious about the trademark infringement, I hunted down the excerpt from the book that Wikipedia uses as a source (a book called Databases Demystified) and this is what it says in the book:

>> The forerunner of SQL, which was called SEQUEL (for Structured English Query Language), first emerged in the specifications for System R, IBM’s experimental relational database, in the late 1970s. However, two other products, with various names for their query language, beat IBM to the marketplace with the first commercial relational database products: Relational Software’s Oracle and Relational Technology’s Ingres. IBM released SQL/DS in 1982, with the query language name shortened to “SQL” after IBM discovered that “SEQUEL” was a trademark of the Hawker-Siddeley Aircraft Company. When IBM released its next generation RDBMS, called DB2, the SQL acronym remained. To this day, you will hear the name pronounced as an acronym (S-Q-L) and as a word (see-quel), and both are considered correct pronunciations.

I was hoping for a bit more interesting or detailed story.

> they officially say it is Postgres-Q-L.

I always interpreted it as Post-gr-S-Q-L. Which is basically the same thing but makes more sense to me because it’s as if the name had a silent “e”.

my-ass-que-ell is the way to go

Sequel-lite here. I know that makes no sense phonetically.

No love for "seekwelitay"?

This is how I will pronounce SQLite from now on.

I'm totally in on this. We can make it happen!

Eskewellite

Sequelliteh

Squalitee

Cirquerlanite

Diet Seek-well

Squeal-ite. Because SQL is "squeal", like the pig.

PostgreSQL is pronounced "post-gres". You absolutely never pronounce the "QL".

Is your name Ay-ayron?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7FixvoKBw

and it does sound like a mineral which is quite in line with how I see sqlite.. pretty, timeless and rock solid

I think there's a case for disputing the official pronunciation because it's based off an "official" pronunciation of SQL. I've heard it ess-queue-elle and sequel, but personally side with sequel. It was originally called “Structured English Query Language”, abbreviated and pronounced "SEQUEL"; later shortened to "SQL" but same pronunciation. So I figure sequel-ite is a perfectly legitimate pronunciation.

Adding to that, in the mid-1980s I worked at a company called Gupta Technologies, founded by Umang Gupta and Bruce Scott of Oracle.

Their first product was SQLBase, pronounced "sequel base". The next product, which I worked on, was SQLWindows, pronounced "sequel windows".

We knew that some people pronounced SQL "ess cue ell", but no one at the company pronounced it that way, ever.

That's how I do it. I understand the etymological reasons for "S-Q-L-ite", but SQLite is just too ubiquitous in my everyday work for me to speak 4 syllables when referring to it.

Last month I discover NGINX is not pronounced "en-jinx", and today I discover SQLite is not pronounced "sequel-light".

2020 is turning out to be pretty terrible guys.

You and me both, my friend.

Apparently I've been using S-Q-L-ite, not S-Q-Lite.

All these years I've been using "Engine-X", not "en-jinx", and didn't know it.. https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/community/faq/

I only knew it because I had to look up the pronunciation. I kept calling it N-G-I-N-X, but could never remember the spelling.

Wait until you hear how 'valgrind' rhymes with 'grinned'!

I've been getting that wrong for quite a while.

There's a certain irony in getting the name of a debugging tool wrong.

I have always pronounced "NGINX" as /ŋɪŋks/. So, I was wrong, too. But I always pronounced "SQLite" and "valgrind" properly, at least.

I'm still just gonna keep calling it "sequel light".

I pronounce it "ess que lite"

I'll be honest and say that in my head, I think 's-q-l lite'

One of the many reasons I love sqlite and redis are because of the attitude of the developers. Sqlite has just an uncanny amount of testing, I wonder if it's the most formally tested piece of user software (outside of formally proven software and the space/medical industry I suppose).

And Salvatore (redis) has a way of simplifying issues that gives me a great deal of confidence in the decisions he makes and the code he writes. I really like the code and reasoning behind his 'linenoise' library in particular

> Jokes aside, though, I don't think it's entirely coincidence that SQLite, something that is so good and reliable, was made by someone who seems so conscientious and thoughtful.

The same could probably be said about Redis and Salvatore Sanfilippo.

What’s the episode number?

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