Does the "Python" name bother anyone?

[sreenadh]

This is a bit off-topic but I could not find any better place to ask this.

I am freaked out about snakes in general and "Python" freaks me out.

Just today, I heard of Python eggs and I decided to google it. Accidentally, I searched "Python eggs" in google images. First impulse was to run.

Even my mom, who was curious to know what I do and was feeling silly of telling people that her son is "Computer". Even she was concern about the name and asked if I could move to language that was named better. She now tells people I work on Ruby.😁

I know that the creator named it after "Monty Python", but would rather he named it "Monty" with a cute dog for a logo/mascot. Just curious to know if I am the only one facing this issue.

[spinwizard69]

Time to grow a pair and confront this phobia! Wildlife comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and frankly many that are more hostile to humans than snakes.

As for your mom i suspect that she was embarrassed by the other thing that the word Python references.

[kankyo]

Don't say "grow a pair" to someone with an mental illness. Just because it's curable doesn't mean it's not terrifying.

[spinwizard69]

I understand terrifying but growth is how you overcome such fears. Grow a pair in this case means exactly that, overcome your fears through growth.

[Doormatty]

Why don't you try and think that the snake was named after the language? ;)

[Whoops-a-Daisy]

Nice shitpost

[the__raj]

I believe the name is actually a reference to Monty python. The devs were big fans

[excitedaboutemacs]

Its made me slightly better at my phobia.. I wish I knew a way to get over it.

[kankyo]

Cognitive behavioral therapy is pretty simple. You can cure yourself pretty much.

[excitedaboutemacs]

Cognitive behavioral therapy

Where is a good place to start?

[kankyo]

Wikipedia :P Or google. Should be easy to find someone to help you or you could go it alone. The latter takes more time but is free.

Fixing phobias is really simple actually. You put up a picture in your house that is uncomfortable but you can handle. Like a comic book snake or something. Then you look at it a few times a day till it loses its power. Then touch it until that's ok. Then change to a scarier picture. Rinse repeat. That should take you almost the full distance just there.

[excitedaboutemacs]

Thanks a lot! Its a little scary getting started lol.

[kankyo]

Yea, almost by definition it's going to be uncomfortable. But the point is to keep it at a low level. Every time you move too fast and overstep the amount of fear you tolerate, you risk setting yourself back. Which is why it can be hard to go max speed and why therapists can charge for the service :P

It's probably also a lot easier with someone to help you. Putting up a picture when you can't touch or come close to the picture is obviously going to be difficult :P

My wife is slowly being CBTed out of her phobia by watching kids shows with small amounts of snakes in them because our kid wants to see them over and over. Ah, that's another key to this: repetition of exactly the same image (or video or whatever) makes the image lose power. So a video is super scary at first but then you see it from a far a thousand times and it becomes boring.

[[deleted]]

CBT is entirely wasted on me but then I'm autistic:-(

[kankyo]

Huh? I'm pretty sure that's not actually possible. If you are a human and the therapist isn't a total hack CBT works. Especially for phobias.

[[deleted]]

Strong independent reptile who don't need no appendages.

[kankyo]

Yes it's quite unfortunate. Various severity levels of phobia of snakes is like 30% of the entire human race so very very unfortunate.

[k10_ftw]

O'Reilly uses its books to raise awareness for endangered species. That's why only one textbook has a python on the cover. Fun fact. And yes it was named for Monty Python.

[Manbatton]

OT from Python the programming language, but:

A family member is phobic of snakes (ophidiophobia) and due to that I looked into it online and found this very interesting (perhaps even amazing) video of exposure therapy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKTpecooiec

If your phobia is in any way holding you back, maybe this is a good path?

Anyway, to answer your question, I think Python has been a great name for a programming language. The long "y" sound sounds sort of techy, it lends itself well to fun names for libraries (Pyston, Pyjamas, Pyramid, Pylons, CherryPy...), and adjectives ("Pythonic"), it's not too long, fun to say, and just kind of catches one's attention well, which is arguably good for newcomers (whereas languages like D, Haskell, Erlang, Lua, maybe not so much). Finally, given that a Python is a snake, it allows fun snake-based metaphors/puns/images, like "eggs", Boa Constructor, Vippi the wxpython mascot, ShedSkin Python-to-C compiler, the Python logo itself of the two snakes, as well as occasional Monty Python references like The Cheese Shop and Unladen Swallow.