The two hardest problems in computer science are cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors.
A recent video I watched by Stand Up Maths about an off by one error 1200 years in the making:
And before Pidgin was named Pidgin, it was named GAIM, which was short for GTK AIM, which was short for GIMP toolkit AOL IM, which was short for GNU Image Manipulation Program toolkit America Online Instant Messenger, which was short for GNU’s Not Unix Image Manipulation Program toolkit America Online Instant Messenger and it never ends.
Which bible passage is that again?
Stallman 2:7-11
Does anyone still use pidgin in 2024 even?
With the new EU’s interconnection laws I hope I can WhatsApp from Pidgin, or even from irssi!
But no, I don’t use pidgin anymore. irssi, yes.
Also, almost all of that is written in C, which is a successor to B, which is a simplified version of the Basic Combined Programming Language. There was never an A.
Assembly.
Is there a D?
Yes, but I’m not sure if we want to open the “programming language can of worms”.
There’s B, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, D, E, F, F#, F* and so many more. Also, they may or may not have anything to do with each other
But of course Java and Javascript are related /s
Though there was a programming language called A Programming Language. Not the A programming language. A Programming Language.
@mindbleach @waigl APL?
Yes, A Programming Language.
Which requires a space-cadet keyboard.
TIL Wayland is named after a town
so is dracut and weston.
i think that naming software after towns in Massachusetts is somekind of red hat in-joke.
It’s even neater. The name of towns/cites cannot be trademarked. The safest thing you can do when naming a project is naming it after a town so you don’t run into legal troubles in the future.
You can eventually trademark once you get big enough. As with all things law it’s a bit tricky. However, the default is that geographic locations aren’t trademarkable.
For further reading on when you can trademark.
https://www.yospinlaw.com/2016/06/15/trademark-on-a-geographical-location
Who’s going to take this as legal advice and name a project Apple?
Openstack releases are named after the nearest town to conference that matches the next series in the alphabet.
I always thought this was the origin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_the_Smith
I always thought it was the corp from the Alien series. 🤓
Wait why didn’t they keep unpacking the recursive acronym further? GNU’s Not Unix’s Not Unix’s Not Unix’s Not Unix I’d say that’s a pretty good amount although if there’s a mathematical way of formulating the unpacking of acronyms in a text I’d like to see the that repeated until infinity.
i tried that and the stack overflowed
Fair enough.
Just put it in a formal grammar:
GNU -> GNU's Not Unix's GNU -> gnu GIMP -> GNU image manipulation program
“GNU is Not Unix Image Manipulation Program Tool Kit” is still a better name for GTK than “GIMP ToolKit”.
It’s a name that will definitely raise some eyebrows in the less technically inclined circles. (and maybe a few “Pulp Fiction” references about “bring out the gimp”)
What a coincidence, I’m currently learning GTK4/Libadwaita :>
(before it was Kool, KDE was a reference to CDE, the Common Desktop Environment)
The logo looks like an ASCII butt.
With just little bit of formatting, it would communicate the information infinitely better. Why don’t people make the minimal effort, once, when not doing leads to each and everyone having to figure out what the fuck it’s actually trying to say.
Apologies. I’m grumpy after a three hour meeting.
the real problem is this sentence contains no formatting no punctuation and no capitalization it must be a failure of our public education system in america that kid dont get the proper education they need in this day and age to use proper gramer and formatting where needed i bet most of you cant tell me the proper time to use a semicolon vs using a colon and thats ok because i dont either i do try my best to put it in the right place sometimes looking it up and failing to understand comas are also frequently used to much by people im sure your not alone in this assumption it could also be that english is hard and schools spend more time teaching us to consume and parse english rather than a balance of both reading comprehension and writing skills
im almost sad that its linux that became the dominating open source kernel instead of “GNU’s Not Unix! Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons”
(hird stands for “Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth”)Not gonna lie, took me a moment of thinking and waiting for a search engine to load before I realized Kool Desktop Environment is just KDE…
I always thought the K in KDE just stood for KDE.
KDE stands for KDE is not a Desktop Environment.
While looking it up, I’m pretty sure I read that Kool Desktop Environment was changed to K Desktop Environment. Either way, it’s absolutely Konfusing regardless of how you slice it.
Konfusing? Everything is krystal klear in KDE, or you kan make it opaque, too, as all konfigurations are exposed for maximum kustomization
Originally, it had no meaning. It was just the letter K. There are attempts to rewrite history, give it some purpose, but no.
Never let programmers name things 😁
All these years I thought GTK stands for Gnome Tool Kit…
It’s pretty common for people to think that, since the GNOME Foundation adopted it. It was originally created for GIMP though - the developer didn’t like Motif so they built their own replacement for it.
