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Comment by marshray | Hacker News Reader

> Why would you start such a confusion?

There are far more software project starts than good names out there. Finding a good name that is also not used by any other project can take a bunch of time and energy away from your code.

> Why would you want to fight with that software for page ranking?

The vast majority of software projects never make it far enough for the name to matter. You don't know which category your project will end up in when you start it.

> Why does this mostly happen to JS technologies?

Because JS is popular and makes it easy to start new ad-hoc code libraries. There are also a lot of half-baked libraries out there that will waste your time. So many developers end up making their own.

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  There are far more software project starts than good names out there.

I doubt that. Define 'good name'. Also, for open source software it does not matter that much what it is named. Who would care if Python was named e.g. Snake or Juice or Foo? As long as it is somewhat unique and catchy it should be fine, shouldn't it?

  You don't know which category your project will end up in when you start it.

Exactly, you do not know it. If your product is successful you want it to be unique. Just imagine the number of wrong tags on SE. And if you product is not successful it is even worse to add unnecessary confusion.

  Because JS is popular

Surprisingly and unfortunately, yes. But other technologies have had their time as well, e.g. I can't remember any ambiguous naming in Java. Anyone?

  There are also a lot of half-baked libraries out there that will waste your time. So many developers end up making their own.

Ok, why not just name it jQuery then? Hardly an excuse for poor naming choice.

> I doubt that. Define 'good name'.

A good name is pronoucable, spellable, memorable. Common English words can be good choices. Compare the number of common English words (thousands) with the number of Sourceforge, Github, Google Code, Codeplex, Bitbucket, etc. projects (millions).

> Ok, why not just name it jQuery then?

jQuery is a) perhaps the world's most popular project in the domain of Javascript libraries, and b) not a proper English word.

'Derby' is a relatively common English word and two Derby projects are in mildly different domains. I don't personally know of anyone using either project (unlike of course 'jQuery').

> You don't know which category your project will end up in when you start it.

So true. I don't know how many times I've started building a native audio streaming app and all-of-a-sudden I realize I've really built a web-based real time strategy game.

Your points are valid... just thought that one statement was a bit absurd and quite humorous.

I think by "category" he means successful / unsuccessful. As in, not knowing if the project will make it anywhere when first starting it. That's how I understood it at least...

Yeah, that.

the actual quote was

>The vast majority of software projects never make it far enough for the name to matter. You don't know which category your project will end up in when you start it.

The "categories" are:

1) Projects where the name will matter because the project is successful

and

2) Projects where the name won't matter because the project dies before reaching critical mass.

EDIT: apologies, this was supposed to be a reply to examancer

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