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Comment by bee_rider | Hacker News Reader

It was an interesting read. I don’t really have anything to add, but wanted to kick off a pedantry argument here.

> I wanted to recreate a canceled MMO called Exteel in an .io style.

I think it should be “a .io style,” since the next letter pronounced is d.

Pedantry activated: in my game dev circles, I've only ever heard .io pronounced "dot i-o" when talking about itch.io. The style, however, I usually hear as "i-o style" or an "i-o game".

Interesting -- if I see "open a .jpg file" I never hear people pronounce the dot, it's "open a jay-peg file". You'd definitely say "open an .exe file", again because no "dot".

On the other hand, "Microsoft .NET" includes the "dot", as well as "bought five .com domains". Yet in contrast, "bought five .edu domains" would usually be said without the dot.

Hypothesis: we don't pronounce leading dots unless for some reason they've become part of well-known "branding", like .NET or .com.

I wonder if it just became “itch dot io” because itchdottyo sounds kinda cool, while itchio sounds more like “itchy, yo.”

It was funny when Sun proudly and unilaterally proclaimed that Sun put the "dot" into "dot com", leaving it wide open for Microsoft to slyly counter that oh yeah, well Microsoft put the "COM" into "dot com" -- i.e. ActiveX, IE, MSJVM, IIS, OLE, Visual Basic, Excel, Word, etc!

And then IBM mocked "When they put the dot into dot-com, they forgot how they were going to connect the dots," after sassily rolling out Eclipse just to cast a dark shadow on Java. Badoom psssh!

https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/ibm-brings-on-demand-computin...

Every gamedev's dream, to make their MMO, then they start to make an MMO and they realize it was a mistake.. :p

Too Real.

They probably give up when they realize they have to make a MMO, because the first M comes from Massive (a consonant sound).

Or don't ever realize it was a mistake...ahem.

Then it's like Alice in Wonderland.

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