Thread by @HeyChelseaTroy

This is a joke, BUT, I have a hypothesis why OS projects get names like these.

Strap in. Let's talk about STEM, and art, and names.

https://twitter.com/vboykis/status/1318350883684495361

To give you an idea of my perspective: I work on 6 OS projects.

Here are the three I inherited and where they fall up on @vboykis' name taxonomy:

theia - #1
zooniverse mobile - #3
galaxy zoo - #3

Usually, an open source project gets a name from an individual contributor, or maybe several. And usually, it's an individual TECHNICAL contributor.

I know dozens of engineers who have a special love for coming up with these names.

Why? Well...

We'll get to this, but first I want to show you this poem by Hannah Weverka. It's about the names that we gave to the Mars rovers.

This is one of my absolute favorite poems. This hangs above my office at the @AdlerPlanet, on a canvas three feet high.

Software engineers are not unique in the way we name our works.

Rocket scientists do it.

Seafarers, also, do it. Ships often have whimsical names.

You know what software engineers usually think about, talk about, worry about?

"What if."

We're trained and socialized to think about the edge cases. To future-proof things. To test thoroughly. We're in the details all day.

All engineers are.

We can't approach those decisions with whimsy. If we do, the damn thing won't work.

But with this thing, we get to be whimsical. With this word, with this name, we can share a scrap of our soul, and maybe someone outside this team will see it.

Lemme show you some counterexamples: OS projects I named.

Scottish Gaelic Tattoo App (exactly what it sounds like)
MPCS-51039 (the course ID of the class I teach)
stock_assessor (assesses public companies based on ethics/values metrics)

These names, they don't have soul.

What they have is clarity: they're not meant to sell themselves. The first two are for teaching. The last one will never have an adopter that I have not spoken to personally.

These names won't inspire thousands of strangers to care about my thing.

But when we get to be whimsical, or we want to inspire thousands of strangers to care about our thing, where do we turn?

Well, to things that inspire us, of course.

What's inspiring? Stories. Legends. The grandiosity of space. The wonder of the animal kingdom.

There's a statement in these names: "Somebody cared enough to call this thing based on their hopes for what it will be."

It's a chance, for once, to not be jaded or ironic or whatever. For a SECOND, we get to share an enthusiastic dream.