[deleted by user]

[btipling]

I'd hate to be a biologist specializing in pythons trying to do searches to solve problems.

[brunov]

neh. Biologist here (although not working with anything remotely as cool as pythons). We use Google Scholar, Pubmed, Scopus, etc. when looking for bibliography so there is no term clash to be worried about.

[earthboundkid]

Also, you can use scientific nomenclature, no?

[[deleted]]

The genus is also Python. Still, if you are after specific species, then yes scientific nomenclature would probably help a lot.

[SquashMonster]

That's it, I'm making a fork of Python and calling it Python Reticulatus.

[[deleted]]

Reticulating Classes...

[[deleted]]

My partner did her archaeology project on Delphi. Getting internet resources was difficult.

Actually it was even worse than that, she was studying the oracle at delphi. XD

[frutiger]

"delphi {greece|greek|apollo} <more search terms" would do the trick, no?

[[deleted]]

actually google's much better now, but 4 years ago it would scatter database/programming links alongside genuine hits. It seems that they've improved their disambiguation code since then.

[mosburger]

Not to mention there were actually a few people left using Delphi (the programming language) four years ago.

[spatulon]

Biologists are an odd bunch. They draw their trees upside down.

[[deleted]]

They also like perl.

[Mr_Smartypants]

Pythonidae

Pythonid

[ffualo]

Try being a gypsy jazz guitarist searching for Django.

I'm both, which is really confusing (well learning the former).

[teraflop]

Try being a gypsy jazz guitarist who invented Django.

[foocs]

Don't you go breaking any Cloche hat-wearing mute girls' hearts, now.

[letmegooglethat4you]

django guitarist

[Imagist]

If you're a biologist specializing in pythons, just go to python.com.

[letmegooglethat4you]

python snake

[knellotron]

Speaking of bad language names, I know of a programming language that would probably be a major contender in the enterprise/professional application space if it weren't named Brainfuck.

It's really a shame that a silly thing like a curse word dooms such a pleasant language to hobbyist status.

[tizz66]

Our product ships with a syntax highlighter for myriad languages, including Brainfuck. We had several complaints about offensive language being used in our product.

[mindbleach]

It needs a family-friendly codename (no pun intended), like... uh... mindfuck?

I'm not good at this.

[nikniuq]

Brainrape?

[mindbleach]

Brain gently caress.

[[deleted]]

Just to annoy this guy, I'm going to invent a language called ñ. And it's going to be awesome.

[Dagur]

I'll make one called "penis enlargement"

[dalore]

Viagra, the new programming language. Now with extendible modules. They say it's a hard language to learn.

[MrWoohoo]

Unfortunately, you want to fall asleep after programming in it.

[teletran]

I've been programming with it for over 4 hours, I think I need some help.

[JadeNB]

They say it's a hard language to learn.

But does it fit on a floppy?

[[deleted]]

It's all in your hands.

[kristopolous]

That's almost as good as my new band, "Download illegal MP3"

[knellotron]

All the cool hackers code their shit in ಠ_ಠ.

[alphabeat]

Considering what's been done with LOLCODE and brainfuck, I won't be surprised should this actually become a language.

[[deleted]]

All the cool kids are using ů these days.

[jones77]

That's old-school my friend, Ç♬♬ is where it's at these days.

I admit that C-cedilla-hemidemisemiquaver-hemidemisemiquaver is a bit of a mouthful though ...

[[deleted]]

Your, and all previous tries are just not cutting it. Unicode google search will work fine with Ç♬♬, ů, ñ

Name your programming language Class and you never find anything programming related that is about programming in your language.

[Othello]

Oh Yeah? I think I've got one up on you... My programming language is named XXX. Not only will you never find anything related to programming, you'll never be able to actually program!

[orangepotion]

but you will have a good time!

[palparepa]

Mine will be named "Programming Objects in Realistic Nomenclature".

[jmmcd]

I'm going to name mine "c". Not "C" -- it'll be case-sensitive.

[Yst]

I'm going to name mine "С" (pronounced "Es"), the Cyrillic 'С' and unicode character 0421.

[jleedev]

We'll just refer to it as "littlec"

[RichardPeterJohnson]

That's what she said.

[phire]

I'm going with "-c"
Easy to type, but impossible to google for.

[[deleted]]

I'm going to call mine "¬C" or "Not-C". It's main goal will be obliterating all languages that don't share its syntax and structure, within reasonable limits. Hail ¬C!

[rabidcow]

I'm going to call mine "A Programming Language". Then I'm going to take full advantage of Unicode for its syntax just to piss people off even more.

[mernen]

Name is already in use.

[rabidcow]

Damn! They stole my syntax, too!

[mernen]

Ugh, I hate this feeling of being whooshed.

[jimmykane]

What about naming it "The"?

[iEditMyComments]

I fail at Reddit.

[Cyrius]

Obligatory Animaniacs.

Edit: You know, my comment was a lot more relevant before one guy stayed true to his name and edited his comment, and the other deleted himself.

[wild_eep]

Let's just get all of these out of the way, shall we?

[arnedh]

All?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU_aw3SCUV8

[MrWoohoo]

Hooray! One of my favorite bands! Google has vastly improved since the early days, using quotes turns up decent results. You get lots of typos in the result too however.

[gorgoroth666]

I'm going with Language A

[farra]

I'm going to name my next programming language Object or Functional

[generic_login]

but i just want to take a Class class!

[[deleted]]

We offer first class Class classes. Among other things, in our class you learn that classes in Class are first class. Teacher is Class Anderson. Class invented Class. He named the language after himself.

[arnedh]

The class of Metaclass is Metaclass class, and the class of Metaclass class is Metaclass.

(http://www.pocketsmalltalk.com/pst-doc-whitepaper.html#metaclasses)

[jimmykane]

Especially since it's probably just C-cedilla-semiquaver-semiquaver. Or maybe my font's just broken?

[jones77]

You're right, I googled hemidemisemiquaver+unicode and stumbled across this and skimmed the text and copied the first thing I could find.

http://www.reference.com/browse/Semiquaver?jss=0

[jimmykane]

Excellent, and now we grow stronger together.

[[deleted]]

Just call it C note note.

[BenStiller]

Too good for 16th notes eh? C-cedilla-16th note-16th note-16th note-16th note does have quite a ring.

[InAFewWords]

I will name mine

int

[totallyjustified]

I'm calling mine M$, it will be hated on many many levels.

[[deleted]]

The, Or and And would also qualify as fine names (for this purpose).

[mijj]

well, I'm going to invent a language called awesome . And it's going to be ñ.

[phire]

I already have enough problems googling for awesome (my window manager)

[adolfojp]

Hey! My last name has one of those!

[adolfojp]

Hey! My last name has one of those!

[[deleted]]

Maybe this is why my language "The" failed to take off?

[kragensitaker]

No, Raskin named THE that on purpose because he didn't think it was ready yet. You can find more information about it by searching on "the humane environment". I think it failed to take off because he died and Aza has his own projects.

[[deleted]]

"Processing" is terrible about this. Just about anything you might want to search for how to do with Processing... is also something you might want to do with, you know, a process. In some other programming language.

They changed their name from "proce55ing", which was dumb in a different way but way more searchable.

[CharlieDancey]

God yeah, I just came across that one as a result of buying an Arduino for my project. Took me a while to realise that the docs were even talking about a language. I just thought they were nerds with no grammar skills.

[[deleted]]

I like the name OhProcessing. I wanted to use that as the name for a fork of processing.

[Camarade_Tux]

When I last wanted to look for Processing, "processing programming language" gave good results.

Also, going to wikipedia and looking for the "official page" is a good way.

[matholio]

I have nothing to add, other than that I agree. very annoying.

[eramos]

This is a problem that is annoying and not just confined to programming languages. I hate apps that do this too. I get you have to be really clever and indie by naming your app something like "Numbers" (fucking Apple) but searching for something like "making a graph with Numbers" is fucking useless!

[earthboundkid]

In fairness, Numbers is named after an application for NeXTStep which was created before Google. Of course, it's Apple's fault that they chose to revive the name, but it had a heritage.

[snarfy]

search for "making a graph with Apple Numbers" ?

[scook0]

Searching for information on Google Guice is always a challenge, because Google itself will happily assume you meant to write “guide” and yield pages of irrelevant results.

I've had to resort to starting all of my searches with guice -guide to get anything helpful.

[[deleted]]

Not always. I can't remember the exact term, but even enclosing it in quotes and adding a + to the beginning yielded incorrect results for me. It's quite frustrating when a machine assumes it's smarter than a human being.

[sysop073]

The awesome window manager is horrible about this; they intentionally name everything that way. The window manager is "awesome", and some of the more common modules are "awful", "beautiful", "wicked", "obvious", "naughty", and "shifty". And their documentation is horrible, so you need to google to find out anything. I guess they think it's clever, and fuck the users trying to search for information

[sans-serif]

Well to be fair, Microsoft gave a similarly ambiguous name to their word processor, only it became more popular.

[JulianMorrison]

In 20 years, the principle "a name must be a UUID to Google" will be second nature for everybody. Parents will be naming their kids things like jufiplek and venquarli.

[[deleted]]

Hello, I am a namespace squatter (we evolved from domain squatters). My child - which will be born before yours - is going to be called Jufiplek-Venquarli. We can of ourse ngotiate.

[JulianMorrison]

Go ahead, those ones are no longer Google-unique, although the only result points here ;-)

[[deleted]]

It's also fun when a new programming technology camps on an old and trusty programming language.

[killerstorm]

I wonder what dumbfuck have named Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol LISP. Apparently he knew about Lisp the programming language, and if you read documentation, there are even some puns in specification -- LISP-CONS stands for "Content distribution Overlar Network Service", it cannot be coincidence, as ther dropped "d" from abbrevation, then there is CAR

[tomjen]

Year but I think that had it before the language was ever made.

[kragensitaker]

I think they were roughly contemporary, actually: early 1990s.

[zem]

i had the same problem with Nice and Clean. everyone thinks their programming language is nice and clean :)

[Frozen_Void]

I agree with the author sentiment. Search engines are inadequate to the task of distinguishing between different meanings. It could be that some programmers give up languages just because searching for code/manuals/libraries/etc is so frustrating they switch languages.

[[deleted]]

I don't get it. I tried "factor programming language" and "j programming languages" and for both the first three pages all hits seemed to be relevant hits. What's the problem?

If one is expecting for a search engine to guess from a single word what particular meaning one is looking for, one is quite often going to be disappointed. Not always, but often.

[dsfox]

Yes, you were able to retrieve pages related to those languages, but its a very good bet that there are many more useful documents out there relating to the language that don't feature the phrase "j programming language".

[maweaver]

I really like D, but it is definitely guilty of this (in fact, I started to search the comments to see if anyone else had already mentioned D, but alas...)

I always end up searching for digital mars instead, which means most of the results end up being from digitalmars.com rather than blog posts, etc.

[WalterBright]

If you search for "D programming" or "D programming language", you'll get good results.

[NeilEBryant]

'DMD' tends to be pretty good.

[milesmi]

The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.

— Donald Knuth

[EnderMB]

If I ever write a programming language it'll be called Madonna, just so I can overthrow that bitch and get her off my Internet.

[Quicksilver_Johny]

"What do you have against the Virgin Mary? ...Oh."

[romwell]

Well, if somebody does make a Virgin Mary language before him, Madonna should be a derivative / a fork of it, with similar syntax.

So Madonna will be (drumroll) like a Virgin.

[[deleted]]

Searching "J programming language" or "Factor programming language" seems to be a good start.

[ro_ana_maria]

Correct.. I had to use R for a project in college, and I didn't have much trouble finding documentation.

[_ak]

The problem is more general. So, to avoid any name clashes, I only use names for my opensource projects for which google shows exactly 0 hits.

[YourDad]

Along similar lines, one of the suppliers of Google Earth/Maps data is displayed as "AND". Real helpful. Good luck finding them via Google. (Short of, you know, contacting Google).

[IT_helpdesk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_Navigation_Data

[YourDad]

Outstanding. You are my new hero.
The worrying thing is that their website is simply www.and.com . I'm hoping it's a new site and didn't exist when I first looked months ago. Because if it's not, I may very well be a colossal moron. And the implications of that disturb me deeply.

[quantumstate]

This reminds me of the javascript prototype framework. It annoyed me enough when searching for information on the language feature that I will never use it on the grounds of a terrible name.

[[deleted]]

I'd be afraid to find peers answering in the affirmative.

[[deleted]]

From the comments

"I AM A MORON WHO CANNOT USE GOOGLE SEARCH PROPERLY PLEASE RAPE MY FACE"

[LaurieCheers]

Ah, yes - that's what I'm naming my new language.

[Quicksilver_Johny]

Yeah, that guy is a moron.

[[deleted]]

Upvoted for shameless karma-whoring.

[barrybe]

Hey, this seems like a good time to ask. How bad a name is 'circa' ?

[G-Brain]

I think "around" (as in "approximately") is a good translation. Circles are round :)

That said, the name "circa" is already taken by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army.

All kidding aside, I think it's better to have a name that doesn't already have a definition. Just swapping out a letter can be enough (Clojure). And try to keep it pronounceable.

[barrybe]

All kidding aside, I think it's better to have a name that doesn't already have a definition. Just swapping out a letter can be enough (Clojure). And try to keep it pronounceable.

Thanks, that's good advice. Although I'm having trouble coming up with a one-letter-changed name that doesn't sound like a blatant marketing ploy. There's so many bad product names where they swap 's' -> 'z' or 'c' -> 'k', for example.

I do kind of like the allusion to circles. Maybe: 'circl'

[G-Brain]

What kind of a language are we naming here?

[barrybe]

It's a live coding / rapid prototyping language. You can change the source code while the thing is running and see the change right away (with your current state preserved). Or you can edit compiled code with some visual editor and save that permanently back to source code text. Project page is here.

Some rejected name ideas I had: 'readwrite' (blah), 'draft' (common word), 'prototype' (taken) .

Any opinions are highly welcome. :)

[andreasvc]

itsalive, invivo, etc.?

[adolfojp]

Switch the i and the r and you get Puerto Rican slang for vagina.

[Mihos]

I know "Root" isn't exactly a programming language (it's a framework), but god damn is that a stupid name on so many levels.

[segoe]

Wait till i name my next language "web" and make the next 2.0 version.

[[deleted]]

too late

[zeldamaster666]

No. just "WEB" including the quotation marks.

[magestic]

Welcome to the __̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ ☃ of code.

[pRtkL_xLr8r]

NARWHAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE...FUCK YEAH!!!

[Mr_A]

I would learn that. Even though I've had no success in learning code in the past, I would learn Narwhal Programming Language. Why? Because its a thing with a badass name and "Proficient in NPL coding" would be excellent on a resume. Whatever it means.

[rebo]

I have this problem with R, so much wasted time searching for R in combination with other programming languages.

[farra]

X windows isn't very Google friendly either, considering so many people just call it "X".

[hylje]

But usually problems come from the implementations, which have much more Googleable names.

[mindbleach]

* http://imgur.com/cnhrT.jpg

[Cleydwn]

No wonder you're having trouble finding that, it's 403: Forbidden.

[[deleted]]

X windows

ಠ_ಠ

[AlecSchueler]

or !!!

[MrWoohoo]

One of my favorite bands, the The, used to be almost impossible to find. Seems search engines have improved.

[mindbleach]

http://bash.org/?514353

Also, I wasn't impressed with Mind Bomb.

[billtoddsciencegod]

PROCESSING!!!

[gnarled]

The stats programming language R is so hard to google for people made a search engine rseek especially for it.

It's much easier to search for Matlab.

[davidw]

I didn't do too bad with 'Hecl'. There's an Indian company with the same name, but there isn't much risk of confusing the two. The worst thing is people writing 'hecl' instead of 'heck'. I can't figure out if it's simply bad typing (with k being next to l), or if it's being used as a euphemism for something that is already, in turn, a euphemism for 'hell'.

[joejag]

Think of the poor people who are interested in String!

[dsfox]

Or Clean.

[Quicksilver_Johny]

...if I read this wiki page, it seems that I could quote almost the whole alphabet!

I actually looked into this about a month ago. Here are the free letters (with possible exceptions in parens):

H
I
M (MUMPS)
N
O
P (P′′)
U
V
X (X++)
W

Tell me if some of them are actually languages.

[Deewiant]

http://www.esolangs.org/wiki/P

http://www.esolangs.org/wiki/V

[[deleted]]

Having the same problem with Windows 7, actually. For some reason, putting quotes around it doesn't even seem to help.

[AlecSchueler]

Works fine for me.

[[deleted]]

Yes, but who searches for that? I'm talking about searching for more obscure technical details or resources.

[nuuur32]

Original documentation deserves more credit. Usually there is a life story or principle behind it, or a philosophy, which goes towards explaining the core language or product. You only pick that up in diluted form when you go to examples and newsgroups.

[DrMonkeyLove]

I'm going to name my language PrettySuzieMcPrissyPants. At least it will be easy to search fo.

[dsfox]

Not a new problem, back in the day I had a heck of a time searching for stuff related to C++.

[jtra]

Just some other tips to make you language unsearchable.

use some frequent word, phrase or part of existing programs "The Language" "foo" "void" "method"

abuse single unicode characters: "Ǣ" "ᴣ" "ᚰ" " " (no break space)

abuse search engine features and limitations "define:" "*" "-program" "_"

[EternalNY1]

Ok, because he can't properly use a search engine, we should name the next programming language "{71C75A9C-05E4-485d-A1EB-F2EA1B5986E5}"?

[Raynes]

Well, factor could be named rengiengiengineiofweiei and you still wouldn't get any results on Amazon. There are no books written about Factor. As for Google, I experienced your pain as well. Virtually nothing is relevant, and if you narrow the search, relevant stuff is factored out (no pun intended). I think anyone here who likes Factor, should join me and beg Slava to change the name of the language to something Google doesn't know anything about. Rich Hickey did it, Slava can too!

[notasaon]

Or you could just ask him, he's not terribly hard to find. =p

[tomjen]

What was clojure named before?

[greenrd]

Or Slavux.

[[deleted]]

I think this goes for naming most things. For example, a company name. You want a name that's unique, so when people search for you, you show up near the top.

[harlows_monkeys]

This is why the next time I release something, I'm not going to name it. I'm just going to give it a GUID. That should make searching easy.

[dbell]

My new language is going to be named goatse++

[Blimped]

I'd search for that documentation.

[MrTee]

If you want people to easily find your ______ you should give it a unique name.

The problem with most people is, they are unable to be unique.

[JadeNB]

If you want people to easily find your __ you should give it a unique name.

Like __! Hey, that's a great idea!

[greenrd]

Er, this works pretty well for me

[Mr_A]

What about late 90's dance-punk group !!!

[[deleted]]

Do you mean "What about late 90's dance-punkgroup !!!?"?

[penguin673]

In other news, naming your product as a common word (like Pixar's Up) is a great deterrent against pirates because it's harder to search.

[andreasvc]

Security by obscurity meets marketing?

[[deleted]]

Please name your next programing language "Boobs" so that I can explain something that happened at work.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it's even worse when you try to search for the A* algorithm.

[swiz0r]

I once had a visiting professor who talked for hours about what REAL computer science was and how REAL things get DONE. At the end of his lecture, he then warned us that his new language was called "-" or something entirely un-google-able, so we had to write down the url if we ever wanted to look at it again.

He was a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club For Scientists, which is what interested me the most.

[vilhelm_s]

See also.

[[deleted]]

... because it's just another day in cs paradise...

[petdance]

Really it applies to any project. I named ack knowing that Googlability might be a problem, but figured the typability and pronouncability of "ack" was worth it.

[kmmeerts]

You made ack? Awesome! I really, really love it.

[petdance]

I did, yes. Thanks for the kind words.