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Comment by rbarr | Hacker News Reader

What an unfortunate name. Perhaps, in the confusion, it will help to actually promote Rich Hickey's wonderful work.

This is indeed an unfortunate name. The word 'closure' was, at first, used to describe a concept in programming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_(computer_science). Then Clozure and Clojure came along. Now, I can see how these two are related to the aforementioned concept, but I simply can't see what these 'Closure tools' have to do with the concept of closures. Yet the name would suggest that they do. Is there anybody from Google that would care to explain?

Note that the word closure has meaning in set theory and other areas of mathematics relevant to computer science. SICP explicitly avoids using what wikipedia calls a 'computer science closure' for this reason.

It's not quite as bad as PrototypeJS -- the most ironically named library ever. The whole point of it is to force Class-based bullshit onto the only pure Prototype-based language anyone uses. It's named after the concept it's designed explicitly to stamp out.

So depressing.

Depressing? Don't talk to me about depressing. I'll be over in the corner rusting for the next nine million years.

-- Marvin

It was called Closure before Rich announced Clojure to the world.

"Closure" being a general concept in programming, I always disliked the name "Clojure". Same thing as Google Chrome, everyone is now confused when you talk about browser chrome as a general thing.

Naming is a pretty powerful thing. If you name your crap with regular nouns, what's left for others there?

Like, suppose you build a crappy GUI system and just dub everything based on simple self-describing words such as windows, word, notepad, internet explorer, you might end up wildly successful yet for reasons other than technical superiority.

I agree that "Clojure" is kinda a silly name, but what else are you gonna call it? I assume Henly wanted a name that conveyed its functional and/or Lisp roots, and the fact that it's on the JVM.

Let's try some names using the usual JVM language conventions: JLisp works, but it's boring, and Jisp sounds kinda suspect. Parenjases is just silly. Or maybe LLBeans for "lazy lisp beans"...but that's just getting too cute.

I think I probably would have gone with Jambda.

In case people are wondering, here is how the Clojure name came about:

"Clojure is pronounced the same as the word "closure". The creator of the language, Rich Hickey, explains the name this way: "I wanted to involve C (C#), L (Lisp) and J (Java). Once I came up with Clojure, given the pun on closure, the available domains and vast emptiness of the googlespace, it was an easy decision.""

At least this is how it is outlined in this document:

http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html

"what else are you gonna call it?"

How about "Armadillo"?

Years ago, i wrote a compressor for javascript.

I called it "Arnold" because it was strong and squeezed javascript into a smaller shape.

Thats a terrible argument... He did indeed "announce Clojure to the world" before Google did, and now we all associate the phonetic name with him. Treat "closure" as a project name and pick a different product name, Google.

What about http://www.clozure.com/clozurecl.html? I believe it was Clozure before Clojure was released (but I could be wrong).

How about the Closure web browser which predates both Clozure and Clojure?

http://www.cliki.net/Closure

Even without the near-collision with 'Clojure', the full-collision with the 'closure' concept is problematic. They should prepend or append a 'G' or 'JS' for clarity (to both humans and indexers). EG:

GClosure, JSClosure, ClosureG, or ClosureJS

I'm with you. I totally read Closure as Clojure.

I totally read read as read.

I'm getting disillusioned with software naming. Everyone wants a cool name that's fun to say, but all the names mean other things too, and quite a few don't describe the project very well.

Why is it called Closure? Does it close stuff? Does it pass functions and bindings? What could possibly have inspired them to use this particular name?

Picking a name for a software project is one of the few areas where a developer gets to kick loose and be completely creative, and even fanciful.

Personally, I love picking names that recast old words in a new way, and think Closure is a great name for this project.

"Clozure" is taken as well.

http://www.clozure.com/clozurecl.html

Any other consonants that can be shoe-horned into that slot?

Clo-de-jour?

I suspect the confusion will only affect people that don't need the specific implementations...

People that want Closure for their JS goodness will know which it is, similarly for Clojure and Clozure lisps. And I generally search out new tools by description rather than name, so the naming issue becomes more of a marketing issue than anything else, and given the name space, it does seem a relatively hot area at the moment...

At least they didn't go for something like GJST...

Despite the closeness in name, aren't they pronounced differently? I've always pronounced "Clojure" with a hard "j," rather than like "closure."

Edit: Turns out soft "j" is order of the day, there's a whole discussion about it: http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/... - so confusion can continue to reign ;-)

I think most of the intended audience will not find 'Closure' confusing, because they are unaware of the concept that already has that name.

The overlap of people interested in Clojure and people interested in Closure is rather small.

The overlap of people interested in Clojure and people interested in Closure is rather small.

This entire thread is evidence against that point.

Unless HN somehow selects for people interested in lisp-like things...

...who also develop web sites...

"I think most of the intended audience will not find 'Closure' confusing, because they are unaware of the concept that already has that name."

Pretty sad to expect that so many people working with JavaScript will not know what a closure is.

Not that you're wrong; I honestly don't know, but would hope things aren't so bad.

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