Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | donotsurveil's comments login

Julia is a first name which is free of negative association.

Bro is associated with obnoxious, stupid, despicable, disrespectful.


Git is associated with completely ignorant, childish, and lacking in manners. So what? It's the name of a piece of software, and if there's sufficient adoption, it starts to lose its old meaning in a tech context.

Which, for "bro", is fine by me.


Git isn't gendered.


Right. I'm just pointing out that it's fine to name software something gendered or something associated with obnoxious, disrespectful people. See Julia and Git, respectively, for examples of the above that seem to be working out just fine.

The real problem is that 'bro' is inherently masculine in a male-dominated industry - which has unfortunate implications if we're trying to be inclusive of women. That's it. If people use it enough as a technical term for a piece of software, maybe 'bro' - like 'man' - will stop feeling weird when you type it into the command line.

Until then, it absolutely is offensive and unwelcoming.


Thus proving that this whole discussion is about the new fashion of aggressive gender-neutrality.


> Bro is associated with obnoxious, stupid, despicable, disrespectful.

This sounds a hell of a lot more like an issue with you vs an issue with the term. When I think of 'bro', I think of the short form of calling someone brother endearingly. I wasn't even aware of the frat context until a few years ago. Hell, even within the frat context, it's not necessary "obvnoxious, stupid, despicable, disrespectful", it's just a young guy who's part of the party culture that's associated with college, at least in the US.


Seriously? That is what you get from "bro"? Somehow I have a feeling the issue lies in you, not the word there :/


I never get that impression when my brother calls me "little bro." And all my friends who were/are close enough to treat like brothers. I'd call women who are that close sis if the culture around gender weren't so weird and arbitrary.


To me it's not a gender issue, it is that bro is synonym for obnoxious, annoying, stupid, disrespectful among others.


We have different opinion and if that's how you feel then it obviously is not sexism then.

I am not sure how it's disrespectful. If the annoying and stupid part comes from the popular culture use of "bro" in movie and street, well maybe it's the environment the person is in. I have met a girl from another country and whoever she talks to she would address the person as sir or madam. It sounds respectful but after a while it sounds annoying and stupid because she can just call the person Mr. X or Mrs. X.


This is why you don't get a terrible name for your idea if you want it to succeed.


With a user provided content database, you have a problem: users can input crap content. So you devise a way for user to sort the crappiest from the less crappy and now you have two problems, and so on.


You're missing the point. It's not about being offensive but about being self-explanatory. For this initiative to be successful it needs to have a wide support and large user base which is not gonna happen with a name based on an insider joke only.

Just look at the effort and energy dispersed in discussing the name here that could have been used to improve their database if they had chosen a good name for their tool.


That's the best argument against the name - that it actually causes the project itself to fail.

Good insight.


Man is a pager interface to system documentation, the content is written y knowledgeable people and is actual documentation.

Bro is a user provided database of one liner command which you have no idea if they will do what they claim when they do work.


Could your statement be more wrong ?

To most people english is a foreign language which makes it improbable they would get a play on english slang words.

'bro' is not even loosely related to man: man is a pager interface for system documentation, it is standard, has existed for decades and comes with pretty much every *nixes and is related to the info command. The content man displays is written by knowledgeable people (developers, maintainers, etc.) and is split in several sections: 1 Executable programs or shell commands 2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel) 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries) 4 Special files (usually found in /dev) 5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd 6 Games 7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7) 8 System administration commands (usually only for root) 9 Kernel routines [Non standard]

On the other hand, bro is a brand new non standard ruby utility as an interface to a database of user provided one liner command examples ranked through a voting system that could probably be easily gamed. Its content right now is uncategorized and of dubious quality with some command not being working examples, some missing explanation to even being outright malicious.

Those two very different tools are hardly related in any way.

Lastly, fsck stands for file system check, its name is suited to its use and follows a tradition of clever naming which answer the need to be concise, indicative of its use and somewhat intuitive.

see cp for copy, mv for move, mkdir for make directory, cat for concatenate, chown for change ownership, du for disk usage, df for disk free, ls to list files, rm to remove files, rmdir to remove directories, sed for stream editor and so on.

Asking for a rename of fsck to love is just the perfect example against the point you're trying to make, that what you say is relevant to this discussion.


The name is terrible.

Here are a few suggestions of names:

- ccex for common case examples - howdoi for how do I - comcasex for common case examples - usex for use examples - usagex for usage examples - howtouse for how to use - ill-namedpoorlythoughtoutcommand for bro - loudandobnoxiousdespicableman for bro


You got it all wrong, the name of a command has to be practical and be related the actual use of the command.

Naming your command based on an inside joke renders it pretty useless to those outside who don't get the joke and hard to find when you don't already know the name.

Less being named from more makes sense, both are common terms and less is more. But bro as a related thing to man when it is actually something totally different is too far fetched to make any sense.


Perhaps you are unaware of the history of unix.


  $ ack --thppt

  _   /|
  \'o.O'
  =(___)=
     U    ack --thppt!


This doesn't mean dewitt point is invalid. From the point of view of someone outside of USofA bro is portrayed in the movies and the internet exactly as dewitt and urban dictionary says.

A loud and obnoxious fraternity guy with partying, acting stupid and engaging in despicable behavior as their life style.


Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: