[ANN] god 0.1.0 released

[pat eyler]

Why? At least now the name refers to *something*.

Even if you don't believe in a/the g/God, naming a software project in a
way that's nearly certain to offend some class of potential users is probably
a bad idea. It reduces the potential number of users/contributors, and
may retard the spread of the software as well.

When I first wrote RedGreen, I was thinking of using another name that
I thought was a good pun on what it did. As I thought more about it, I
realized that it would probably be offensive to some number of potential
users, and while my code was a joke, I thought the idea was too good
to put obstacles in the way of sharing it. In hindsight, I'm really glad I
took the time to come up with a better name.

The Ruby community has long held that names are important for methods
-- they should be descriptive and help the programmer. We've never done
a very good job with names for projects/libraries (at least in my opinion),
maybe it's time for us all to spend a little more time and effort in that
direction.

 

[Travis D Warlick Jr]

Or seriously hasten the spread via publicity over the name.


This particular project is very aptly named as it is designed to "play
god" with the system.

I completely agree. I think this whole argument over the name is quite
stupid -- It's just a name for a freakin' piece of software, folks; get
over it; it's funny.

Of course, this is coming from the guy who's friends nicknamed him
"TechGod" at church, and when the old ladies had a come apart they
changed it to "TekWiz" -- of course a few of them still had problem with
that seeing as how "Wiz" means "Wizard" and that involves witchcraft.

All Hail Harry!!

--
Travis Warlick

"Programming in Java is like dealing with your mom --
it's kind, forgiving, and gently chastising.
Programming in C++ is like dealing with a disgruntled
girlfriend -- it's cold, unforgiving, and doesn't tell
you what you've done wrong."

 

[pat eyler]

I completely agree. I think this whole argument over the name is quite
stupid -- It's just a name for a freakin' piece of software, folks; get
over it; it's funny.

The fact is though, that funny doesn't have to be offensive, and
the name certainly is offensive to some. Frankly, I'm secure
enough in my own beliefs that I'm not going to worry about it.

I've said my piece, and I'll shut up about it now.

 

[Ryan Davis]

Perhaps its my age (44), which to some might suggest a certain
level of
maturity and/or discretion, but I would have spent a bit more mental
time to come up with a name, like I said before, that was more
appropriate, or perhaps, OK, I'll quit beating around the bush on my
real feelings - less inappropriate.

Personally, I find it arrogant to state that your age might suggest
maturity or discretion. I've seen more than enough evidence to the
contrary, including this mail I'm responding to. The above only
really implies a knack for run-on sentences.

But, being a candidate for an old fuddy-duddy, I could be looking at
this all wrong too. With God (the real one) being taken out of
schools,
and His commandments being taken out of our courthouses, and in all
the
other ways society has found to remove or otherwise pidgeon-hole
God out
of our lives, perhaps this reference, however infinitesimally
minute in
the scheme of things, will raise someone's curiosity enough to do some
exploration for themselves on the matter.

This is not a forum for political or religious beliefs, yours or
anyone else's. I find this vastly more inappropriate than naming a
software project "god" (esp when said project looks over daemons and
the like).

 

[John Joyce]

The fact is though, that funny doesn't have to be offensive, and
the name certainly is offensive to some. Frankly, I'm secure
enough in my own beliefs that I'm not going to worry about it.

I've said my piece, and I'll shut up about it now.

Offensive is subjective. Somebody will always be offended by something!
Worrying about it too much is just silly.

John Joyce

 

[Todd Benson]

This is not a forum for political or religious beliefs, yours or
anyone else's. I find this vastly more inappropriate than naming a
software project "god" (esp when said project looks over daemons and
the like).

I agree with Ryan here, but we mustn't forget that knowing your fellow
programmer on topics outside of the programming domain may actually
help you program better. Why? Because of the use of certain idioms,
vernacular, and what not. A programming language like Ruby doesn't
work in a vacuum.

Todd

 

[Brad Phelan]

I've never seen a "name" that didn't refer to something. Perhaps you
meant "implies" something. And yes, it implies a sense of arrogance on
Tom's part.

And your comment, Benj, about the Gaming industry already doing it - so
it must be "ok"... and your initial thoughts on objections for the use
of the name, and then signing as "mostly agnostic"... You sir - have
given me the best laugh of the day! Your first thoughts must have come
from your non-"mostly agnostic" side, and by the definition of agnostic,
you are uncertain anyway. So, your post is a trip, (a riot, it's
hilarious), anyway you look at it! And yes, in this case, it's
perfectly relevant.

Perhaps its my age (44), which to some might suggest a certain level of
maturity and/or discretion, but I would have spent a bit more mental
time to come up with a name, like I said before, that was more
appropriate, or perhaps, OK, I'll quit beating around the bush on my
real feelings - less inappropriate.

But, being a candidate for an old fuddy-duddy, I could be looking at
this all wrong too. With God (the real one) being taken out of schools,
and His commandments being taken out of our courthouses, and in all the
other ways society has found to remove or otherwise pidgeon-hole God out
of our lives, perhaps this reference, however infinitesimally minute in
the scheme of things, will raise someone's curiosity enough to do some
exploration for themselves on the matter.

One last comment. Yes, this name choice, as we've already seen, will be
the brunt of jokes and snickering, but in the end, you (Tom) have set a
pretty big expectation for the usefulness and quality of your wares.

Good luck with your project. (P.S. yeah, I know, "luck" is a pagan
thing!)

Todd

Now, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist on my comments - take
a deep breath, relax, and realize that I have not personally attacked
anyone. Might I have made fun of you? Well, that depends!

A few comments on this amusingly off topic thread.

(1) Larry Wall, a legendary programmer and committed Christian founded
the Perl programming language and littered it with religious allusions.

(2) The history of literature music and culture is full of the borrowing
of others symbols for selfish purposes better or worse. The early
Christian church was not innocent and borrowed many former Pagan
symbols. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"???

(3) If Tom want to name his project "G.d" them let him be. Persecuting
those claiming divinity has a historical tendency to make the said
target of the persecution more popular, eventually becoming in the eyes
of the faithful the very thing the persecutor took offense with in the
first place.

B

 

[Trans]

Let's try this again (I already replied to this once but lost it in
the aether somehow...)

The Ruby community has long held that names are important for methods
-- they should be descriptive and help the programmer. We've never done
a very good job with names for projects/libraries (at least in my opinion),
maybe it's time for us all to spend a little more time and effort in that
direction.

Are you suggesting that we should start moving in the Java direction
with regards to library naming? Perhaps your are right. Perhaps that
someone has now named a library "God" is a real omen. It's a tuffy
though. Creative names have been a hallmark of Ruby, with _why being
sort of the exemplar. I suspect, to move in the other direction would
require a real campaign on the part of the community, especially Matz,
the RubyGems teams, and the RubyForge guys.

The topic interests me a good bit because I have broken Facets down
into a bunch of little mini-projects. Any of which could easily be
packaged and distributed independently -- and I have flirted with
doing so. But it's problematic for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, there's nearly 100 of these mini-projects, and most have
fairly generic names. (I don't want to get too creative, or I won't be
able to find anything!) So If I released them as such I'd quickly soak
a bunch of Gem namespace. But maybe that doesn't matter? OTOH, if I
release in a more Java-fashion, say for example, 'facets-annotations'
instead of just 'annotations', then I feel like I'm hurting myself
from a marketing stand point. Someone else could just come along and
use the plain name for themself. So I don't feel like there's much of
an option. RubyGems is sort of pushing the use of creative names b/c
of this. That's why I've sometimes wished Gems has a project flag. If
two packages had the same name than you could select from them based
on their project. After all, that's how RubyForge is organized.

Secondly, (and maybe this a little OT but...) if I did release these
many mini-projects, I'd run into the issue of potential version
conflicts between them and the original all-in-one package, because
they contain the same libs. I'm not sure there's an easy way to
circumvent this issue should it arise. OTOH, If I instead made the all-
in-one project simply a multi-package, i.e. a package that has no libs
itself, just dependencies on the many mini-packages, then there's the
fact that RubyGems' require implementation is terribly inefficient.
Plus Gem's standard install procedure asks you to confirm every
dependency. Who wants to do that for 100 mini-libs? Blech! (Yes, I
know about -y, but no one expects they'd _have_ to use that for their
own sanity

T.

 

[Kevin Clark]

Are we really still talking about this? Have any of you looked at the
software? It's really, really cool, with more interesting and useful
things on the way. Why does the name matter? Tom isn't going to change
it, and some people aren't going to be happy. That will always be the
case. Let's drop it, eh?