The philosophical issue behind the disutility of project names like
these is "Meno's Paradox"

On 8 December 2015 at 21:01, EuanM <[email protected]> wrote:
> "I wish people would choose descriptive names for their projects" - Todd
>
> I agree.
>
> I went looking for the current state of dbxtalk recently.  It seemed
> to ba apackage designed for my needs - to X[-over] from a DB to
> [small]talk.
>
> I went there and the the page started talking about "Glorp" and
> "Garage".  Neither are mnemonic or meaningful
>
> These projects are just the tip of the iceberg.
>
> Pharo project names have publisher-only project names.  The project
> name equivalent of write-only computer languages, like Brain-F**k.
>
>
> On 7 December 2015 at 17:52, Todd Blanchard <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Sigh.
>>
>> I wish people would choose descriptive names for their projects.  I went 
>> looking on Smalltalkhub for some capability and what I found are thousands 
>> of packages with names that mean nothing and no description entered either.  
>> If you want to make sure nobody ever uses your code you've just taken a 
>> giant step in the right direction.  But if you hope to make something lots 
>> of people benefit from - nobody is going to look for "mushroom" when they 
>> want crypto capabilities.
>>
>> Sorry, this has been really bugging me lately.  We, as a community, do a 
>> lousy job of making our code easy to find.
>>
>> -Todd Blanchard
>>
>>> On Dec 7, 2015, at 07:38, Ben Coman <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I like it, but it seems you missed my point :)
>>> mushroom --> 117,000,000 is two orders of magnitude more hidden.
>>> Anyway, maybe I overplay its significance.
>>> cheers -ben
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 11:11 PM, Robert Withers
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> I renamed the project to Mushroom and I also dumped the encoding work to
>>>> focus on shutdown, optimization and serialization. Here's the wiki:
>>>> https://github.com/SqueakCryptographySquad/Mushroom/wiki
>>>>
>>>> thanks,Robert
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 12/06/2015 01:42 AM, Ben Coman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Robert Withers
>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12/05/2015 09:24 PM, Ben Coman wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:57 PM, Robert Withers
>>>>>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Now I think you are right on with your observation. Additionally, the
>>>>>>>> number
>>>>>>>> of dialects could increase further with Fuel serialization, just port
>>>>>>>> SecureSession and bits.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Alright, I came up with a name and it may border on the egregious ...
>>>>>>>> presenting ...
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "Maelstrom"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Great sounding name.  However some general advice for the community,
>>>>>>> since I see a lot of great sounding project names drowned out in the
>>>>>>> noise of our web-search-centric universe.  A litmus test for project
>>>>>>> naming is using google search to find which return low search results.
>>>>>>> Today, its more important to be unique than any other attribute of a
>>>>>>> name.  So in general, *dictionary* english words are not the best.
>>>>>>> One technique is to intentionally mispell the word you like.  Here are
>>>>>>> some comparative examples (note, the surrounding quotes are required
>>>>>>> to avoid google trying to be helpful and correct the spelling)...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "maelstrom"    --> 7,480,000
>>>>>>> "maelstroom"  --> 6,200
>>>>>>> "maelstrum"    --> 2,280
>>>>>>> "maelstruum"  --> 7
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lots of interesting other techniques can be found by searching on:
>>>>>>> techniques to generate brand names or domain names.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> cheers -ben
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would be happy to change the names to something more unique, though it
>>>>>> may
>>>>>> take a few. Are you suggesting "maelstruum"?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> cheers,
>>>>>> Robert
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> *Suggesting* yes, but the choice is yours ;)  You need to own it.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think maelstruum is certainly memorable with the double "u", but
>>>>> maybe jarring next the the "m".  I'm inclined to maelstroom, since I
>>>>> associate it with "zoom".  I wouldn't necessarily go for the absolute
>>>>> lowest results.  I have an entirely unsubstantiated belief that
>>>>> anything less than 10,000 gives a reasonable chance to compete once a
>>>>> user's browsing history is taken into account.  Finally you need to
>>>>> check existing results don't return something abhorrent (I didn't do
>>>>> this).
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd encourage to play around testing on google search.  Its quick and
>>>>> easy to generate and test alternatives. I've added a few more below.
>>>>> "maelstra" --> 3,560
>>>>> "maelstram" --> 504
>>>>> "maelstrim" --> 1200
>>>>> "maelstroon" --> 58
>>>>> "maelstroomi" --> 4
>>>>>
>>>>> btw, I wouldn't swap the order of the "ae" since that would be
>>>>> susceptible to real typing errors.
>>>>>
>>>>> cheers -ben
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>

Reply via email to