by jchw | 2025-12-12 05:44:02+00:00
> My argument is that even a name like awk is much more relevant to the people who used this software back then, of course it was not the best way to name it, but at least it held some meaning to it. Unlike modern software, awk and others were not written with the consideration of a wide user-base in mind. Regarding whether we "lost the plot" or not, I believe that we did, because as mentioned, in the 80s there was a current of people who named software conventionally, and up to the 2010s, the names still used to hold some rational even when word-played or combined with cutey names.

I don't personally get it. I can see the argument for names that are descriptive, because a descriptive name might be useful. Meanwhile though, a name like awk is only useful if you already happen to know what it stands for, which to me seems a little silly. Relevant? Maybe... But to what end?

> Not at all, I find it quite fun, just unprofessional.

Why do you consider it "unprofessional"? This seems like a cultural thing. For example, in Japan, it seems like it is not unusual to see cute illustrations in otherwise professional contexts. I am not sure there is a standard for professionalism that is actually universal.

Disregarding that, okay, fine: let's say that naming software after irrelevant things is unprofessional. Why should we care?

Software developers have spent at least the past couple decades bucking trends. We went to work at white collar offices wearing khakis and t-shirts, with laptops decked out in stickers. Now I'm not saying this is all software developers, but it is certainly enough that it is a considerably recognizable part of the culture.

Professionalism, in my eyes, is descriptive, not prescriptive. If professional software engineers normally name things with cute nonsense names, then that is professional for our industry.

I can see the usefulness in descriptive names because they serve a purpose, but names that are merely somehow relevant but otherwise don't tell you anything useful seem just as useless as non-sense names, and justifying the distinction with "professionalism" feels odd.

> Sent by replying to an automated RSS email, via msmtp (light SMTP client, which is unlike firefox, not a consumer product and its name has to do with its function).

Note how this also neatly works as a strong argument against descriptive names. RSS? msmtp? We're now drowning in acronyms and initialisms. I don't particularly have anything against these names (I mean, I use msmtp and the name certainly doesn't bother me) but the utility of the name RSS is quite limited and the vast majority of people probably don't really know what it stands for (to my memory it is Really Simple Syndication, but it may as well be just about anything else, since that doesn't help me understand what it is truly useful for.)

But you do hit on an interesting point that probably helps explain to some degree what's going on here: even for small CLI utilities, more often than not programmers doing open source are actually bothering to work on the marketing and deployment of their software. When I was younger a lot of open source was still more decentralized, with many programmers just dropping tarballs periodically and Linux distros (and others) taking care of delivering the software to users in a usable form. Part of trying to deliver a holistic product is having a memorable name.

msmtp may not be developed as a product, but in practice, almost all software is like a product. Someone is a "consumer" of it. (Even if that person is also a producer of it.) People get "sold" on it. (Even if it's free.) How it's marketed definitely depends on the sensibilities of the developers and the target audience but I'd argue almost all software is "marketed" in some form even if it is non-commercial and not packaged like a product. (Even something like GNU's landing pages for things like Coreutils is arguably a very, very light bit of marketing)

The actual truth is software programs that have more care put into marketing are arguably more professional. The professionalism of having a "relevant" name is rather superficial in my eyes, but having concise "marketing" that "sells" your software well to its intended audience and provides good resources for users is professionalism that makes a difference. Likewise, plenty of things delivered more like products do have relevant names! For example, KeePass and SyncThing come to mind immediately.

So whether the next great email server suite is "SMTPMailSuite" or "Stalwart" is mostly immaterial, but I'm not surprised when marketing-concious developers choose memorable names. (Obviously in case of Stalwart, there's a company behind it, so having good marketing is absolutely in their best interest.)

Another downside of a descriptive name is that software evolves over time and a name that is too descriptive could stop being relevant eventually. Off the top of my head it's hard to think of a specific example, but you can see software that evolves this way all the time. (One example on the Linux desktop is how KWin went from being an X11 Window manager to a full-blown display server compositor during the Wayland transition; but that name obviously still works just fine.)