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The Ever-Annoying Prefix

Apr 12, 2005

Why is it that the recent trend in development is to create projects names that hint at the fact they happened to be written in Python, Java, or for the Mac? It seems a bit silly to me that every project created using Python should be named PySomething or some other nonsense starting with the letter P. Granted, I too am guilty of such behavior, but I tend to start with prefixed names and eventually change them when something more clever strikes me. However, this tends to not be the model for man and as a result we are stuck with a never ending parade of PyThis and JThat and iSomethingOrOther. Perl, C, Ruby, C++, and countless other developers somehow resist the urge to name every app according to their chosen language meme. You rarely see apps prepended with pl, c, r, cpp, lisp, or whatever, even though anyone of those choices are just as valid as py, J, or i. It tends to annoy me that Apple would spend countless hours developing some fantastic application only to in the end call it iTunes. Further, by naming such a great tool iTunes, Apple is tying it to less worthy iApps such as iCal, iPhoto, and iSync. Likewise, there is an army of OSX developers willing to adopt such a brain dead naming scheme (one that even Apple doesn’t follow exclusively). Perhaps with Java it makes a bit more sense, but only in some cases. For example, JUnit is a perfectly valid use of the J prefix… and that might be the lone exception. Don’t even get me started on the debacle being perpetrated by Python developers. There are almost an infinite amount of pySomething application names, many of which are extremely mundane words with a cute little py tacked onto the front: PyCalendar, PyBlog, PyLisp, PyTools, PyMenu, PyGraph… and on and on. I guarantee that if you type ANY word into Google with Py appended to the front, you will find at least one hit; often many more (each a different project). Now I may be splitting hairs here, but it intrigues me that this behavior only seems to follow certain computing subcultures. I do not expect an answer to this question to be forthcoming.
-m

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