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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

good for them but

> One of the first questions people ask when we say we are doing a spring batch is what letter we will use to refer to it since “S” is already taken for the summer batch. We considered something like “Sp” or “P” but one founder made the suggestion of using “X” since it's a common variable name in programming and thus makes sense since the name “Y Combinator” itself is a programming term.

This chain of reasoning seems totally disconnected? "While trying to come up with a single letter to denote spring, since S was taken, we decided on... a common variable name instead" ??? what happened to denoting spring in there? Am I missing some clever reference? Is spring in particular the season for common variables?

The spring constant (in physics) is denoted by the letter "k", why not use that? I know its not programming, but at least it denotes spring.

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Notation is ultimately arbitrary, it's just what everyone has agreed on.

(As a fun fact, Spanish has decided to use X for Wednesday because both Wednesday and Tuesday start with the same letter, M: https://www.20minutos.es/cultura/blogs/yaestaellistoquetodol...)

I think you may need to review what that word means in case you have an incorrect belief about its definition. Almost all notation ever created has a reason or a system, I have no idea why one would think its ultimately arbitrary (having no reason or system).

Consensus is not arbitrary either, that's a strong reason, a lack of arbitrary-ness. Even the second definition of arbitrary, something done unilaterally, is contra-consensus.

Isn’t it possible thst there could be multiple , equally systematic, candidate notations. Isn’t the decision as to which one gains traction arbitrary?

I learned a while back that Miercoles is a minced oath in Spanish. As in, you start to say the other thing that starts with Mier--, make eye contact with a child, and say the other thing.

I can confirm, my wife uses this all the time

The same exists in French with Mer...credi

Also the word for “of or pertaining to spring” is “vernal”, so… V? Obscure and a bit antiquated, but also technically correct (the best kind).

Vernal equinox is a pretty well-known expression

El verano is Spanish for summer. Primavera for spring. But I agree it's all arbitrary. Could just do the boring thing and say 2025Q[1-4]

Nobody knows what it means but it's provocative, gets the people going.

G would have made more sense

In MTG the 5 colors are white, blue, black, red, and green. WUBRG. B is already taken by black (bla > blu) so blue became U. Hence in my head logic spring should have been G (technically sp > su but no point to change summer’s S after decades)

Maybe the "founder" is the Twitter boss

On reddit recently I read that X has the ASCII decimal 88.

We live in a bizarre yet tumultuous time.

But it… doesn’t?

    >>> chr(88)
    'X'
    >>> ord('X')
    88

You might be looking at the hexadecimal representation instead.

60+ crazy years of ASCII.

In good spirit of programming, nothing better than a terrible non-descriptive one character variable name.

I think SP would have been the best. The thing about W25 or S25 is that you can guess what W or S means without being told. Can you imagine trying to explain this to someone? There's nothing about it that makes sense. There's no kernel of intuition to chew on. You'd finish explaining and the other person still wouldn't get it.

"What batch were you?"

"X25"

"What does X stand for?"

"Oh yeah haha, its a clever programming reference, it actually means spring, but S was taken by summer, so they used X instead because its a common variable name."

Most likely by the time you are asked “what batch were you?” Anyone that would be asking that question is going to be familiar with the naming convention whatever it is

W25 is the west batch, SF. S25 is the south batch, uh Austin? Sao Paulo?

X also comes right after W, just as the Spring batch will come right after the Winter batch.

I would just take the opportunity to rename all batched 1,2,3,4 and call the batches yc25 etc to denote all batches in 2025 etc. who cares what season you are in at this point. But this is just me.

Z would have made more sense as a pair of the Y combinator (and the next letter).

X is jut plain boring because there's nothing theoritical behind it.

Z has the unfortunate association with the russian invasion of Ukraine.

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