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Comment by djmips | Hacker News Reader

I don't like things that pollute our natural language namespace. Couldn't you have named it something unique?

An overwhelming number of programming-related things "pollute our natural language namespace". Off the top of my head:

Ruby, Python, Java, Rails, React, Go, Rust, Elm, Dart, C, C#, Node, Next, Nest, Kafka, LaTeX, bash, fish, cat, Android, Apple, Windows…

I'd be happy to search for this with "bubble tea framework" or "bubble tea tui" or similar and it doesn't bother me.

elm?

It’s a type of tree.

Yes, an elm is a kind of tree.

I'm having trouble thinking of a single example of a language, library, or piece of technology that is not either an acronym, a name of something that exists, or a combination of such names. Be it an object (Flask), a concept (Scheme), a letter (C), a person (Sinatra), or an animal (Python).

Maybe we need explicit namespacing in English? I'll start saying stuff like "programming languages colon colon ruby" so people can be absolutely sure what I'm talking about.

Alas, people might get the wrong idea about what kind of colon you mean.

erlang

I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I was today days old when I realized that “clang” and “erlang” were really C-lang and Er-lang, much like Go-lang.

Named after Danish mathematician Agner Krarup Erlang[0] who invented queuing theory & telephone network analysis, but they told management that it stood for "Ericsson language" (at least that's what I remember from a Joe Armstrong presentation, but I can't find it right now.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang

All Terrible.

I bet you HATE the Go language name.

I call it "Golang". I also _hate_ the use of 1 letter variables in Golang. Give me three and make it easy to search for symbol names in my no-frills editor.

/derail.

Golang for written communication when you want it to be searchable but day to day usage Go works just fine.

The single letter variable approach is sensible and not dogmatic -- e.g., `i` in a tight for loop makes sense.

I myself just don't understand why any reasonable person would pick an existing common word for a project in 2022 instead of using the plethora of name generators that can give you something original without even trying.

But like, people that work for Google surely know something about search term collision. Or just don't care about making anything else that has "Go" in the query gets confusing results. Which is an odd stance for Google employees, but none of my business I guess.

Of course it's common anyway, I just don't see why you'd do this to yourself. You either bury your own project, or you are so successful with branding that no one can find what used to have that name. Google can push something hard enough with perfect SEO to make sure that Go the language shows up. A github page?

I mean, it's not Google but: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=go&ia=web First hit -- https://go.dev

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=bubble+tea&ia=places This project is not anywhere near the front page and I can't imagine it ever being. Too many different companies are selling boba tea.

I never really like it when companies use existing common words, but unless you're a huge project or a company that can push the SEO and marketing it's actively burying your work from anyone finding it.

The number one reason is that I can spell Bubble Tea. Something like "imgur" leaves open a lot of possibilities.

People are also pretty good at disambiguating things. Fewer than 7% of people ordering from Amazon have ended up in Brazil on accident.

Eh, if I search "bubble tea go" on Google this library is the first hit. Same for "bubble tea interface", "bubble tea library", and "bubble tea tui". That's good enough for me. It's not the name I would've picked, necessarily, but it's better than a name that's hard to spell, type, or remember.

I do.

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