Neil, You convinced me.
I meant the content and usefulness of a programming language need not be correlated strongly with the name given and especially not the shortened name it commonly goes by. But if you mean how hard is it to use a web search engine to find things, indeed. The perfect name would be something so unique nobody else would use it. By that standard, searching for R or C is a tad excruciating. The choice of other keywords can help as well as tricks like searching for [R] instead of plain R. So, yes, python also finds snakes. Guess what pandas finds? [Before anyone asks, it is not a programming language but is a part of extended python.] You start wondering if you are searching in a zoo. But I suspect a name like X69Y-22C might be a great name to search for but not very interesting. When I look at names of computer languages I see a few patterns. Some pick a name to honor Blaise PASCAL, Haskell Curry, Alan Turing or Ada Lovelace. Many are a condensation of a phrase with some computational meaning like List Processing, Algorithmic Language, Common Business Oriented language, Formula Translator? (I recall using the What For version). Programming Language 1, A Programming Language, Program Logic and so on. Some have the creator(s) names embedded, such as AWK with one letter per author. Quite a few seem to be terse enough for a single letter. Besides C, R and S, and their variants such as C++ and C# and S+, there was a D, an E and a T and a J and an M and another musical note in F# and of course the Q from its own dimension. I used to think I had studied and even used quite a few programming languages over the years but staring at these lists makes me realize I never even heard of so many of them. -----Original Message----- From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avigross=verizon....@python.org> On Behalf Of DL Neil Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2019 11:54 PM To: 'Python' <python-list@python.org> Subject: Re: the python name On 3/01/19 2:03 PM, Avi Gross wrote: > Challenge: Can we name any computer language whose name really would suggest it was a computer language? > > I think the name is the least important aspect of a computer language. Perhaps not. If you subscribe to the wider StackOverflow Driven Design philosophy (SODD), then it would be a kindness to choose the language's name so as to be (close to) unique when entered as a search key. Thus the OP's original assumption/confusion between a programming language and a serpent; Java and a large island; right down to C, R, etc which are too short to be usable search terms in most engines. -- Regards =dn -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
