A shame, but I just can’t teach it in my programming languages class. I can’t stand up there in front of 200 students saying coq coq coq for an hour. I just can’t.
Maybe that's a bit too touchy-feely, but from a more ruthless, "only the course material matters" perspective, fine, let the kids who can't get over the name suffer the consequences. The kids who take it in stride will have an advantage. Nothing wrong with that.
In fact, on the list of new proposals for a successor name, a few proposals are pronounced “coke.”
Like how the correct pronunciation of LaTeX is "lay-tech", while obviously a lot of people pronounce it "latex".
Likewise for just changing the sound to “coke.” It’s a decision that the real sound sounds bad, with a suggestion to change it to a different sound. Same problem, same solution.
If the maintainers decide to change the sound or the spelling, I’ll call it whatever they want. And I’ll be more comfortable presenting it at work if it doesn’t sound like I’m saying cock.
If you can't reliably pronounce my name and it'll sound like a bad word when you try, then you should say what you can say safely. I don't care enough that I want you nervous or slowing down a meeting. But if you expect me to change my name to what you could say I would not.
You trying your best is okay, you requiring me to lower the bar so you can succeed is not okay.
It’s the same reason I can’t teach brainfuck. There are 10001 languages worthy of class time and these languages disqualify themselves in my opinion.
As others mentioned, "bit" means "cock" in French, but by the time you learn what a bit is, you're old enough to not laugh at it anymore. And you surely get to use Coq in your studies when you're older than when you learn about bits.
I mean, in France, laughing at your teacher because he speaks of "bits" (cocks) and you're >16yo would certainly make you look like mentally challenged.
For what it's worth, the 16 year old are usually the better behaved, as they are advanced students from high school who are beyond their peers in ability. They find the material eminently fascinating and are fully engaged. The ones to watch out for are the 21 year olds.
I personally learned Coq at 14. Who are you to decide what's interesting and useful to 16 year olds?