Whats in a name?
Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:00 pm
That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet
Throughout my programming career, I have never really used very interesting names. What makes a name for a program good? Is it the ability for the user to point and be like "yes thats exactly what i need", or more of a catchy name that people remember?
Many unix programs have names that have absolutely no meaning, but are names that you will remember because they are catchy. Applications like Kopete, for example, do not tell me that Kopete is an instant messenging program, but rather just help me remember the program itself. Or even google, if an alien came to earth and didnt know what google was, he would never guess a search engine.
Then again, programs such as Microsoft Word, are fairly obvious what they do, and people still remember it.
I am currently in development of a major php project, and i would like to know what you guys think about naming programs. Do names really matter that much in the end? And if so, what makes the perfect software name?
Throughout my programming career, I have never really used very interesting names. What makes a name for a program good? Is it the ability for the user to point and be like "yes thats exactly what i need", or more of a catchy name that people remember?
Many unix programs have names that have absolutely no meaning, but are names that you will remember because they are catchy. Applications like Kopete, for example, do not tell me that Kopete is an instant messenging program, but rather just help me remember the program itself. Or even google, if an alien came to earth and didnt know what google was, he would never guess a search engine.
Then again, programs such as Microsoft Word, are fairly obvious what they do, and people still remember it.
I am currently in development of a major php project, and i would like to know what you guys think about naming programs. Do names really matter that much in the end? And if so, what makes the perfect software name?