I say that because "python.com" looks like a URL. DOS was a loooong time ago (I used it in my youth) and well out of the memory of most internet users today. So instead they see "python.com" and think it's a web address. And while I thought it would direct you to a website about python, you know where that address goes? To a website that has something to do with creating your own camsite. Yeah... that kind of camsite.
And then, it's bad because a user trying to search for it using the universal search/URL bar in their browser can't just type that in and hit enter to search for it, they have to manually select that they want to search for it, or else they go to the site about starting your own camsite.
AND THEN... once they have googled for it... none of the results on the first page have anything to do with this program as far as I can tell.
So yeah, weird, obscure, confusing branding that makes the program hard to search for.
EDIT: I could be missing something? Does this program have a different name and python.com is solely the file name of the executable or whatever? It still seems like it could be more descriptively named.
Yeah, I was aware most would take it as a domain name, but we _are_ on HackerNews, and I think .COM is still an applicable executable extension on Windows. As such, it strikes me as a decent name (when looked at independently).
But ouch, I haven't looked where python.com might be pointing to today, so that's indeed unfortunate.
As for search results, I think the most obvious candidate for bad naming is... the Go language. ;-)
Btw, this is part of the Cosmopolitan (referenced multiplatform libc implementation) monorepo, and only lives in the `third_party/python` directory. I am not sure if it's customary to name Cosmopolitan-linked binaries with a ".com" extension (perhaps it also alludes to the name "Cosmopolitan", but I guess then it'd be "cosm" or "cosmo"), but it definitely does not seem to be a public name you'd search for.
Searching for "python.com" (in quotes) on Kagi or Google returns a bunch of Python-related .com domains, whereas searching for "Actually Portable Python" returns the above site as the first hit — that's the name one should be looking under for this. Though I am sure it'd be nice if a more generic "multi-platform Python binary" also matched some of this (though platforms sometimes mean architectures as well).
I was confused by this naming scheme and I am an (allegedly) seasoned software engineer of the DOS era (team 6.11a).
Reading these comments about why it's named python.COM, yes that's pretty clever but it didn't even occur to me when I first read the post and I suspect the majority of people on hackernews had the same impression.
Go is definitely also bad naming, but the domain is golang.org and the canonical search term for the Go programming language is "golang".
In this day and age, we should probably be optimizing for clarity and searchability instead of "clever use of an outdated tech naming" which half of the engineers nowadays wouldn't even know about.
It's named .com because it's a flat executable format. If you map it into memory and start executing at the first byte (MZ which means JG +69) then it'll just work.
If you are looking for a multi platform build of a specific version of python built with an obscure libc for some niche use case it's _very_ likely none of that is an issue for you, at all.
And then, it's bad because a user trying to search for it using the universal search/URL bar in their browser can't just type that in and hit enter to search for it, they have to manually select that they want to search for it, or else they go to the site about starting your own camsite.
AND THEN... once they have googled for it... none of the results on the first page have anything to do with this program as far as I can tell.
So yeah, weird, obscure, confusing branding that makes the program hard to search for.
EDIT: I could be missing something? Does this program have a different name and python.com is solely the file name of the executable or whatever? It still seems like it could be more descriptively named.