Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names | Kalzumeus Software

Classic essay about how software routinely bumbles human names.

Hey #history and #maritime and #shipping expert people:

Here's a dataset about #whaling with some variables I don't understand (neither do the students using it for an intro #statistics project). If you have any insight into what these variables/terms mean, will you share that?

  • Number of whales struck (does this mean "harpooned," maybe?)
  • Number of whales tried out (no idea)

The data are here:

https://whalinghistory.org/av/logs/coml/whales/

#help #request #highered #teaching #NamesAreHard

CoML Whales encountered and captured – Whaling History

Yesterday at work I hopped on a debugging can with someone whose first name was Akshit. I tried, for pronunciation, "Aksheet", but eventually had a chance to ask how he pronounced his name, and no, it's Ak-shit.

I used to have a name that looked daunting, but was actually simple to pronounce, and I loathed people who chickened out and wouldn't even try to say it.

What do you think about pronouncing new names?

#i18n #pronunciation #namesAreHard

try to say the name, with most genteel pronunciation
22.7%
try to say the name, as written
4.5%
don't say the name, ask the person how to say it
63.6%
something else in comments
4.5%
just see answers
4.5%
Poll ended at .
(My mom tried for the "biblical" spelling, but I get a bonus ‘a’ for "Rachael", btw, in case you're curious, so i'm used to misspellings, this one is just... so EXTRA!) #NamesAreHard #ILaughedSoHard
I got the most SPECTACULAR name-crime, yesterday, and need to share it with you all… BEHOLD! #NamesAreHard #ILaughedSoHard

First, I must absolutely congratulate Ms. Lopez on her amazing discovery. But also, I love how terrible astronomers are at naming things. The Big Ring and the Giant Arc? Right up there with the Very Large Array and the Extremely Large Telescope.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67950749

#astronomy #Astrodon #NamesAreHard

Huge ring of galaxies challenges thinking on cosmos

Scientists discover a huge, ring-shaped structure in space which questions our ideas of the universe.

I've been hacking together a little CLI/TUI for the mastodon API in #rustlang recently. Nothing too fancy, just an API client and some pretty printing but I've hit a block.

Names.

Toot suite is a thing already I think? (Which is good: it'd be criminal if it wasn't) So what do I go for?

Toot swoot? (Debatable)

Honk? (Possible)

Honk swonk? (Questionable)

#softwareDev #namesAreHard #tootsAreHopefullyNot