Coq theorem prover is now called Rocq | Hacker News Reader

Coq theorem prover is now called Rocq

rocq-prover.org

22 pointsrwmj25 comments

(2022) Previous discussions

(35 points, 47 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38779480

(61 points, 64 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41180007

The notoriety of Coq's name is, by a long, long way, the most embarrassing message board trope on HN. For years, you couldn't run a story about Coq --- a genuinely interesting and important piece of software --- on the front page without attracting sophomoric comments about a (bad) English transliteration? is that the word? of the name.

So like 4 years ago they renamed it, literally for this reason, which is embarrassing all on its own, and that's still not enough to get HN to stop talking about it.

I rarely do this, because the moderators really don't want anybody doing it, but I'll say out loud this time: I flagged this post. Just leave them alone.

As a non-anglophone myself, I hate the fact that we have given one language so much power to dictate how every other country and language should name things. You will never find an American company changing the name of their product in the US because it sounds naughty in French. Yet here we are, a group of francophones feeling pressure to change their product's name for anglophones' sake.

  You will never find an American company changing the name of their product in the US because it sounds naughty in French.

Counterexample: Commodore PET. Selling a computer branded as a fart in France wouldn't have gone down too well.

The author knew fine that it was a knob joke (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26743882). In this specific case, play stupid games, get stupid prizes; no-one is asking Le Coq Sportif to rebrand or your local bistro to stop serving coq au vin.

Calling him stupid is really elevating the debate. I agree having to bow exclusively to American sensitivity without any reciprocity is infuriating.

He did a stupid thing. Doesn’t make him stupid, but the action is. (Also this is a stock phrase.)

Well yes, HN people being childish about genitalia is one thing, but ridiculous French naming schemes are another. In the french finite element package code_aster there were 2 different variables named coq_massif and massif_coq, which in the context of finite element translates to "solid beam", but seriously? I realize I'm on thin ice, dabbling in national stereotypes, but in my experience French software developers absolutely suck at naming things.

Party pooper. We have so few opportunities to be silly on HN. Plus it’s good advertisement for what would otherwise be an obscure piece of software. You can’t deny it would be much less known.

I’m not saying it was a good idea, just an oddity. There was no need to curb stomp it with a public declaration of nuisance.

Oh well. Hey, thanks for the whiskey slap. I still think about it fondly.

It's good to see that they have chosen a name that has a much more obvious and less confusing spelling.

While some may lament the departure of the phallus bird, nobody can be sad about the arrival of the giant fierce mythical bird.

They made this change a couple of years back, didn’t they?

It used to be that you could write Coq in Kant (KDE's Kate editor before it was renamed for... similar reasons - though much much earlier / quicker).

I prefer the old name, it was much more memorable because it's funny.

"Yeah I'm playing with my Coq to try and get it working again"

standup> My coq experiments are promising, but it feels a little harder than it should be, and I'm worried it'll be too slow to deliver without some training and long practice sessions.

Thank goodness. It's been impossible to talk about Coq to people who don't already know what it is.

why did they find the need to rename this? Am i missing something?

The linked community survey suggests that a plurality of votes were in favour, which would explain it: https://discourse.rocq-prover.org/t/coq-community-survey-202...

The name sounded like Cock.

Because U.S. English is everything, and people want it that way, and any concern about cultural imperialism that would immediately be brought up in any other context magically doesn’t apply when Americans could possibly be offended. Everyone else has to adapt, no matter their mother tongue.

Meanwhile the world’s most common VCS’s name is literally an abuse (not a misspelling of one), but only outside the US so nobody cares.

Practically speaking there's no reason not to centralize on the particulars of one language while the rest are in the increasingly accelerated process of dying out. Language barriers help nobody. Though it is a shame to rename this, the world needs more whimsy and penises are funny.

Just in time for LEAN to have made it almost completely obsolete.

And now instead of being confused for a bad word, it gets confused with https://www.roc-lang.org/

That's gonna be easy to confuse with Roc, no?

Calling it rocq makes it seem harder.

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