

Think twice before naming your new programming language - gnargeot
http://guillaume-nargeot.blogspot.com/2009/08/think-twice-before-naming-your-new_21.html

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michaelfairley
I think this goes for a lot more than just programming languages. FOSS
projects in general tend to pick some generic English words as names that make
them really hard to find. I've even seen a few startups that've fallen into
this pit.

Ironically, the fact that most "decent" domain names have been taken is
forcing startups to put more time into coming up with a name which could
ultimately help their searchability, though it does come at the expense of the
"speakability" of their name.

~~~
patio11
_FOSS projects in general tend to pick some generic English words as names
that make them really hard to find_

This is related to most F/OSS projects having a crushing deficit in the
marketing skills department. Notice how most don't have a visual identity,
either? And how they typically launch mostly undocumented, on somebody else's
website?

I had a checklist for launching A/Bingo, and held off on it for a week past
when the code was ready, because the marketing wasn't. Logo, slogan, landing
page, usage documentation, install documentation, live demo, domain name. It
practically killed me because I was/am proud of that project and wanted to
start collecting feedback but I know it won't spread if I don't do a proper
job of it.

There is no point in spending dozens or hundreds of engineer hours on a
project if it languishes in obscurity because you were too disinterested to,
e.g., put a logo on it. (Mine cost $210. Cheap at the price!)

Incidentally, even if you can't get the exact match domain .com domain name
for your project, for OSS everyone is just going to Google you anyhow. Name
the project well and you will rank for your own name very, very fast as a
consequence of your normal marketing activities, since good OSS tends to
collect authoritative links with laser focused anchor text. </freeSEOAdvice>

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BerislavLopac
Similarly, I can only imagine the frustration of Jazz fans when they try
looking for their favorite guitarist. :)

Although in this case the last name can help.

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wvenable
Microsoft is the worst for this! .NET is a terrible name to search for. SQL
Server Reporting Services is also awful. At least they've seemed to have
gotten the clue with Silverlight.

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justlearning
eg of what I think of a badly named language.* I think * clojure is a sorry
name for the fascinating language it is.

In the words of Rich Hickey - It's a ploy on closures and is supposed to be
pronounced as cloSSure (and the domain was available; fulfilled his
requirements of combining c for clr, j for java). Many have been spelling it
as cloJure, even stuart halloway(author of the only book available on clojure)
has couple of podcasts with cloJure pronounced with the emphasis on J.

my little rant aside, the name(in context to the article) is instant seo
juice. input just one word and google spits everything clojure, no
distractions from random links.

I have taken a mid way to pronounce clojure - clozure.

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sfwc
I think "Factor" is a good name for a programming language, it's memorable and
it conjures up appropriate mental images. That the word has both of these
qualities ensures that it will be used for many other things, and this will be
true of most good names. Instead of worrying about the googlability of
"Factor", can't we count on people to at least search for "Factor programming
language"? And if Google isn't already returning good enough results for that
now, I think I'd rather wait a little while for search technology to catch up
than compromise on the names of my programming languages.

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GeneralMaximus
What about Ruby? Python? Java? Those are pretty "normal" terms. The only
reason search engines can come up with nice results for those languages is
that there are thousands of pages out there which mention the word "python" or
"ruby" or "java" in context of programming.

I agree that J and R are (and will be) very hard to search for, but not
Factor. If/when the language becomes popular, a Google search for "factor"
will be dominated by results that relate to the programming language.

~~~
jamesbritt
I remember the first time I went searching for the Io and Processing
languages, expecting that the generality of the names would make it hard. I
got good results right away.

On the other hand, some names make it hard to talk about things. For example,
much as I like the Sequel ORM for Ruby, having a aural discussion about it is
more trouble than it should be because you have to be clear when you are
talking about the RUby library or SQL. (Pedant alert: SQL should be pronounced
ess que el anyway, but few people do.)

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s2r2
At least concerning R there's <http://www.rseek.org>

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jacquesm
Excellent point, but you can easily expand the list way beyond programming
languages. Django is a nice one, sure it is a great tribute to a great
musician, but I keeping having to tell google to leave out 'music' when
searching for info.

Search engines ought to be smart enough to determine the general context of
your searches across several searches in a row but it seems that that is not
yet available.

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billswift
Part of the problem seems to be the programmer's habit of using the shortest
possible variable names and commands: ls, cp, mv, and how many programs have
variables a, b, x, and so on. There shouldn't be any drawback to using longer
descriptive names (or funny, arbitrary names) for languages since you won't
have to type them often; and they are much superior in searchability. The more
unique the better for searchability, in fact. Also, can anyone tell me what
he's talking about in making C "easy to search on the internet." Finding
general information on C has been extremely frustrating.

~~~
gnargeot
The following page explains the usage of the "+" operator on Google search,
and mention that some common terms like "C++" receive a special treatment:
<http://www.googleguide.com/plus_operator.html>

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jonsen
Look to the pharmaceutical industry: Aspirin, Pinex, Panodil, .............

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plinkplonk
His advice would seem to distill to "invent a new word as a name for your
language". Would this be a sensible thing to do?

What would some examples of "good" programming language names be? Most
languages I can think of have names from {English words} or existing proper
nouns and so _any_ non new name has a potential to clash on doing a web search
at least till the language name becomes popular enough to rise to the top.

Do we really want new computer language authors to create nonsense phrases as
names for their languages?

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badsectoracula
These two searches seem to work: Factor programming language R programming
language

So instead of writing "Factor tutorial" (for which btw Google asks you if you
mean the language), write "Factor programming language tutorial". Being more
specific about what you're looking for helps.

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devicenull
I use a scripting language that was originally named "Small" . As you can
imagine, searching for it was terrible. They've since moved to a slightly
better name of "pawn".

