

The conversation that led to Ruby being called Ruby - carlosgaldino
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/88819

======
patio11
I took the liberty of rewriting this in slightly more idiomatic English:

<http://pastebin.com/tHDPJsUt>

It is tricky: Japanese chat logs don't have all that much context to go on,
and you have to make a judgment call as to what sort of "voice" they'd be
speaking with. I gave them fairly informal young American programmer
personalities but with just as much reason I could rewrite this to loko like
it was two frat boys.

Disclaimer: I don't exactly go all-out for accuracy when translating to
procrastinate about going to sleep.

~~~
GrooveStomp
Thanks! The one linked in the headline read like to chatbots randomly writing
stuff at each other.

~~~
patio11
The one linked in the headline was the result of a professional programmer and
OSS enthusiast spending probably an hour of their time doing something very
difficult for the benefit of the community. The only reason they were able to
spend that hour was because they had previously spent probably 10+ years
studying English. Had they not spent that hour, the odds of me independently
deciding to translate that email were zero. So, I would suggest upgrading that
comment to "The one linked in the headline was a generous contribution to the
community of the type which we should enthusiastically encourage."

Almost all professional translators strongly suggest that one translate
exclusively from one's non-native language into one's native language. I think
that is kind of a silly rule in the real world, but there is a reason it is so
popular: idiomatically phrasing things in one's non-native language is _really
freaking hard_. I've almost certainly produced Japanese much worse than that
_when paid money to do so_.

More broadly, I'm reminded of a comment I heard from bilingualism debates when
I was six: always remember, prior to criticizing someone for their accent,
that it means they speak one language more than you do.

------
zach

      keiju> But, perl is related to a shell.
      matz> Oh, I don't know that
      matz> never noticed that
    

Whoa. So today I learned that. Never noticed that either, all this time.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Was that a happy coincidence after the fact?

I always thought the official name was "Practical Extraction and Report
Language", or perl for short.

At least that's according to the man pages on my linux machine.

~~~
jholman
May I suggest that if you (by "you" I mean the parent and siblings of my
comment) are going to speculate, you might consider reading the Wikipedia
article before going off in all directions. It's even got sources for some of
the claims (although not all).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl#Name>

------
ayanb
Wow, So Ruby was almost named Coral. Imagine programming in Coral on curtails.

Incidentally, there is actually a language named Coral ( a general purpose
programming language based on ALGOL-60 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_66>
)

~~~
andrewflnr
Maybe you would call the framework "Reef". That would have been pretty cool.

~~~
ayanb
Hell yes, 'Reef' would have totally kicked ass

~~~
re_todd
But then us Ruby programmers would be called "Reefers".

------
jarin

      keiju> ruby 
      keiju> a jewelry name after all 
      matz> put it alongside kanji?
    

Just FYI, this refers to the simpler hiragana characters sometimes put next to
kanji characters (for people who don't read kanji very well). This is also
often a source of confusion for people who see the <ruby> HTML5 tag and think
that it's for the Ruby language.

~~~
threedaymonk
[Pedantic note] They're not just for people who can't read kanji well: they're
also used to provide a phonetic gloss for proper names (where the
pronunciation is ambiguous or unique), or in literary contexts to indicate the
intended pronunciation where unorthodox kanji are used for nuance.

------
9999
So I'll be saying "What's the heck?" a lot for the rest of my life.

------
wccrawford
Am I the only one who wanted to read the original Japanese?

~~~
ejames
A link to the original (scroll down a bit):

[http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-
dev/5...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-dev/5173)

I might try my hand at a translation with better flow... although, remember,
the original is a chat log. Chat logs read in retrospect usually don't flow as
well as natural conversation!

~~~
ejames
Something like this, plus or minus English chat-slang:

(EDIT: dangit, I forgot that HN chops up linebreaks. hold on) (DOUBLE-EDIT:
Text file from my Dropbox:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9485376/chattranslation.txt>)

