Recent comments in /f/programming

Moonside wrote

Reply to cool and new idea for a gimp fork by twovests

Naming things is truly one of the two hardest problems in software engineering.

The GIMP has been around under that name for going on 20 years. Its user base has grown exponentially worldwide, and the tool kit itself is standing on the brink of a quantum leap in capabilities. I see no signs that its name, which has positive brand recognition across a very large community of users, has held back the GIMP's market penetration in the least. At this time, a name change would be actively harmful to long established organic promotion that works very well.

Any "quantum leap in capabilities" is strictly inconsequential to naming, I hate nerds.

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musou wrote

Reply to cool and new idea for a gimp fork by twovests

i use that program but i don't believe that and would support a name change so that i can actually recommend that software to friends without feeling squicked out

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cute_spider_ni_srsly wrote (edited )

Reply to cool and new idea for a gimp fork by twovests

The GIMP name helps the project associate two basic ideas in its user's minds,

  1. A slur towards disabled people, particularly for a person whose body was damaged by crushing or twisting.
  2. A weird sex thing, where the subject is unallowed to act in accordance with their own intelligence.

So when I hear the project called GIMP, my mental association with that project is "Broken, unintelligent, creepy". As such, I keep with the less feature-rich (and also badly named for virtually opposite reasons) Paint.Net.

Then, I remember using the GIMP software in college and I do remember that it was difficult to use and telling people about it getting me weird looks. So that helps reinforce "broken, unintelligent, creepy". It's just not a good name for 2018!

What if you called it Hassy? Is Hassy a good name?

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