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The Best Name Ever for a Computer Language

blog.pokercopilot.com

58 pointsstevoski33 comments

Tech has a misogyny problem? No way.

> It took some years for me to realise that Linda was named after the porn star Linda Lovelace. It was a subtle joke and allusion to Ada by the language's designers

Try and read this and then explain how this is an appropriate "subtle joke", "allusion to Ada [Lovelace]" and "best name ever for a computer language":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Lovelace#Charges_against...

Only misogynists have problems with porn or pornstars.

> Only misogynists have problems with porn or pornstars.

Debatable but not actually relevant: This is about bringing "porn or pornstars" into an everyday work context, not about them as a thing in itself. I would rather say that "Only misogynists have problems with keeping porn out of programming languages".

Did you read the linked article? Linda Boreman/Lovelace was forced into pornography at gunpoint, abused, raped and forced into prostitution. Only misogynists have no problem with that, or with joking about it, whether at work or elsewhere.

sigh I know I shouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole, but I really don't think overreactions like these help anyone.

First of all, sexist jokes are a bad thing, but we need to keep in mind the meaning of the word "misogyny": hatred of women. While sexist jokes desensitize men to sexism in general, which can lead to misogyny, the knee-jerk reaction you're having is beginning to resemble crying wolf.

As for the name Linda, it is a clever reference to a person who shares the same surname as the person for which another programming language is named. No doubt the choice of the person was motivated by that person's fame and no doubt that choice was immature, unprofessional and sexist. Likewise, calling it a "best name ever for a computer language" is probably equally immature and unprofessional.

But the fact is that the reference really is clever and a subtle joke. I agree with you that it's not appropriate, but it's not really the reason to cry "misogyny". Criticizing the OP for being childish, unprofessional and sexist would have been enough without trying to demonize him.

To play devil's advocate, I can't think of anything more befitting the term "misogyny" than what happened to Linda Lovelace, and to the extent that someone calls a reference to her porn career, knowing the circumstances behind it, "cool" I think that's at least an endorsement of misogyny.

That said, I think the author was probably unaware of those circumstances.

> First of all, sexist jokes are a bad thing, but we need to keep in mind the meaning of the word "misogyny": hatred of women.

You are correct in that the definition of misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Misogyny can be manifested in the denigration or sexual objectification of women and in entrenched prejudice against women. From Wikipedia (first item in the definition) "Misogyny .... is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography..." (Allan G. Johnson).

The attitude expressed in the linked article is that pornography is an appropriate (and amusing) subject to link to something to be used in academic and professional contexts. Further, that it's amusing that pornography is linked to a prominent woman simply by virtue of her surname. In doing so, those who named the programming language and those who find it amusing are denigrating both Linda Boreman and Ada Lovelace and expressing and normalising the attitude that this is amusing and appropriate. I find this a clear case of misogyny.

> I really don't think overreactions like these help anyone.

I don't think it's an overreaction, and I would think that the appropriate reaction is to condemn these instances of misogyny. In doing so, hopefully we can create an environment and industry less hostile to women and girls. I'd say that would help quite a few people.

The page says, about C#,

> C#, which is also a musical note one semitone higher than C.

Which is true enough, but am I the only person to think that the original idea must surely have been to signify "(C++)++", with the two "++"es one on top of the other? (See: http://imgur.com/8On6Stn)

[EDIT: Thanks, wtetzner: apparently Anders Hejlsberg had the good taste to agree with me :-).]

http://www.donnfelker.com/how-did-c-get-its-name/

If you like your Unicode: C⁺̟⁺̟

of course a C-sharp is equivalent to a D-flat :-)

Agree with the article; Linda is great, both the name and the project. It was one of the more interesting topics of a Distributed Systems course that I followed, but I never ended up using it (or its concepts) in practice due to the performance overhead.

As a nitpick: Perl is originally not an acronym, the language used to be called "Pearl". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name

I'm currently designing a Hardware Description Language. I'm probably going to call it Vee, because it's main competitors are VHDL and Verilog HDL, which have the same acronym. So mine will be VeeHDL. I'll HN it when it get nearer to completion.

PS I am aware no one says Verilog HDL...

When you release it, if it is good, I will curse your name (hah) when I try to google for information and get back 10,000,000 near misses.

No mention of TCL, pronounced "tickle"? This was the scripting language used in the ArsDigita Community System, one of the first commercially available platforms for database-backed websites.

This is a good point, that some languages cross barriers. Tool Control Language is just another acronym, but "tickle" is a funny one.

There are a number of TCLs (usually job control shells similar to JCL/DCL/etc.) but for some reason they never get called "tickle" the way Tcl does.

What exactly is so brilliant about naming a programming language after a porn star, especially one famous subjected to sexual abuse? How on earth is it a "subtle reference" to Ada Lovelace? What do they have in common, apart from both being women? I don't understand the premise for this article.

They have a surname in common, it seems.

The article calls Linda a porn star, but she became an anti-porn activist. I call sexism on the article for childishly thinking that loose association with sex makes something "best ever", and double sexism for failing to acknowledge her choice to stop.

Oh, good point on the surname. Don't know how I managed to miss that.

Totally agree on the rest of your comment.

"Oh, good point on the surname. Don't know how I managed to miss that."

Don't feel bad. You were not the only one.

I personally like that PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page. Love it or hate, it's pretty cool that a language with such humble roots rose to such widespread use.

Clojure is probably one of my favorite language name ever; it's an homonym of an extremely important concept in the language, the 'j' in the name refers to the Java/JVM ecosystem and it's very easy to google for.

> A reworking of C++ became D

Hey, this is pretty offensive! D is a clean and nice language, compared to the comparatively train-wrecky C++.

> There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

I've always been partial to "Lua". It's as fun say as it is to work with.

I heard that the perl name also is an allusion to it being found primarily within the shell.

> So a successor language to C was C++ (Like C, but a bit better)

C++ is not a bit better than C. It's a whole lot better (for most situations, that is).

Now that I see it, it'd not be "a bit better", but "4 bytes better".

Of course, in C, "C++" actually means "add 1 to C, and then use the old value". (After executing C=3; D=C++; the value of D is 3, not 4.)

Yep, and I bet you've maintained that project as well: "//" comments, and that's about it.

Maybe it's because I've been watching too much Justified, but I really liked hearing the "Harlan" announcement.

"BODOL" is pretty funny.

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