Funny and Irrelevant Program Names? 210
dentar asks: "I got into a conversation with a peer today about funny names we've given programs in the past. I have a small program I wrote for a client called omnihurl whose purpose is to get a summary listing of their last 20 omniback backups and display them. I called it that because I couldn't think of a good name when I wrote it.. It never got renamed. That program is still used every day and is about seven years old. The guy I was talking with had written a backup script named shazbot. A few years later a friend and I wrote a program that was going to be a dynamic DNS type of client and server. I couldn't think of a name for those either, so they wound up being whale and plankton. We still laugh about it. So, how's about y'all? What's the funniest thing you ever named a program? The more irrelevant to its purpose, the better."
Satan meets Santa (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, many white hat folks are affiliated with businesses or other groups who don't take kindly to running something called "satan." It looks bad in the company reports, and some take personal offense. The solution?
Many releases came with a utility which simply moved the n up a bit, renaming the built executable as "santa." :)
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:2)
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:2)
The EXE kept the preferred name Reaper LOL
Good thing PHB's here don't look at final files.
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:2)
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:2)
Re:Satan meets Santa (Score:2)
Never released it though ...
Don't forget Squid (Score:3, Interesting)
Santa's Slappers (Score:2)
The name sort of just popped into my head...
Always, I hate naming things (Score:3, Interesting)
The only place I really spend time thinking about names is when I'm creating an API that other people need to use as opposed to a script that people use whole. Then I try to make the function name describe what the function does and if there's and if there are similar functions which use different argument types the argument as well.
Re:Always, I hate naming things (Score:2)
LOL
Dont remember what it did tho.
Re:OMGLOLOMG!!!!!!!!! (Score:2)
Obvious one? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obvious one? (Score:2)
fsck | s/s/u
Re:Obvious one? (Score:2, Interesting)
DMR: So fsck was originally called something else.
Q: What was it called?
DMR: Well, the second letter was different.
Dennis M. Ritchie, Usenix, June 18, 1998.
--
Re:Obvious one? (Score:2)
/etc/rc.d/rc.S (Score:2)
Re:Obvious one? (Score:2)
Hey, it's open source. You need no longer lament.
Belloc
We've got a ton where I work... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote the backup/restore code, after calling backup "backup", I decided restore would be called "unbackup". =)
We've also got "spank" (it restarts everything, someone off-the-cuff had mentioned spanking the appliance after it was behaving badly).
I've also got a wrapper for forking processes in a way that matches up with the rest of our startup called "forkme".
Hrm, what else. Oh, yeah, one to remove everything in the database "smokingHole". And to get a list of understood SNMP traps, you would run the "trap-yanker".
lipo fat binaries (Score:3, Funny)
*cackle* (Score:5, Funny)
I remember the conversation from my lecturers:
Them: "Come up with the name - you're good at stuff like that."
Me: "Uh.. oookkk... how about Computer Literacy and Information Technology Organisational Relational Information System?"
Them: "That's brilliant! We really like it!"
Me: "Now there's just this one drawback..."
Re:*cackle* (Score:5, Funny)
Me: "Now there's just this one drawback..."
What, can't find it? =)
Re:*cackle* (Score:2)
Unfortunately, we then spent the next few minutes trying to come up with acronyms that spelt out their competitors' names.... Pity, we got some good ones!
Re:*cackle* (Score:2)
Reminds me of Microsoft's Critical Update Notification Tool.
I always loved that one
D.
himem bit-nibbler (Score:2)
There was a program called "The Super Himem Bit Nibbler" because, I guess it didn't do anything but take up high memory. I always got a chuckle out of the fact that it was called "Super"
Good one (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Good one (Score:2, Funny)
I bet that George Herbert Walker Bush wouldn't find that funny at all. In fact, I would assume he thinks that is already a word.
Re:Good one (Score:2)
Were you intentionally referring to the 41st President of the U.S. and father of the current (43rd) President?
Re:Good one (Score:2)
Re:Good one (Score:2)
So far... (Score:2, Funny)
Think about it.
Debugging utility program (Score:5, Funny)
Come a few weeks later, there's another utility to remove the debugging information. Called, of course, "rebuggery".
Re:Debugging utility program (Score:2)
A warm and caring relationship?
GGB509 (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Err... Make that "criterion" [Re:GGB509] (Score:2)
Unix is full of them (Score:4, Interesting)
The pager 'less' of course is a pun on the old pager 'more'. And let's not forgot that the name Unix was chosen to replace an existing OS called MULTICS.
Any program of the horde series (Score:2)
Modules? (Score:4, Funny)
How about spitsqueak? (Score:2)
...and I still use it... (Score:2)
Library Interface. (Score:2)
Document Information Retreival Tool
You'd use it to scrape references from the backend. ie) digging up dirt on a particular publication.
Software named win-something (Score:5, Funny)
One day we did an analysis tool for the other apps. The marketing departement got as far as actually printing brochures before noticing that maybe Win-Anal wasn't such a good name after all.....
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
The least funny? (Score:2)
VIASRA Is A Stupid Recursive Acronym
GNU's Not Unix was cute. Well, maybe. OK, not really. By the time the HURD/HIRD thing rolled around, any residual humor had long been stomped out of the practice.
Worst name? Boy, I hope they come up with an alternative to "Kroupware".
CP/M's debugger (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:CP/M's debugger (Score:2)
slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
There's a GNU utility... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fix O'Matic. (Score:2)
It's purpose was to fix a common problem in a large tree of Makefiles...
best shell script (Score:2)
null routes the top 10 abusers of our mail system.
Slash for Slashdot (Score:2)
Or even BitchX. Maybe you login to bitch!
Once... (Score:2, Funny)
Make file builder (Score:2)
That table was called guzinta because it listed which module "goes into" this one.
My own tool (Score:2, Funny)
The Super Helpful Information Tool.
All of my programs have the same name. (Score:2, Funny)
I keep 'em straight by remembering filesizes
Do variable names count? (Score:2, Funny)
Dim myXYZ As CXYZClass
myXYZ.DoSomething
If myXYZ.bFailin Then
Before you flame my coding style (lack of proper error handling, using Hungarian notation for class members, etc.), this was a long time ago and I know better now. But the code is kinda funny...
Re:Do variable names count? (Score:2)
Unwise.exe (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, if you don't know what it is, many people seem to think it's a virus or something (and it didn't help when Norton identified it as one).
Re:Unwise.exe (Score:2)
Then again, I think InstallShield's __ISDEL.EXE is just as funny, if much worse grammar: "Is delete these files?"
Computer name (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a program, I know but...
In house project... (Score:2)
First it was just a training tool. Then it was used to create quotes and toss them into the backend systems. Then to look up customer history. Then it became a CRM apps.
I called it RUST, because it was a Randomly Useful Sales Tool. It was also an old crufty hack, which fit since things that are rusty are often old and kludgy.
The name has stuck since, and I believe the company still relies on the system. No reported bugs in 18 months, but it was written without a spec and in less than a month. Huge hack.
-----
Obligatory, but . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
I love Nero burning ROM. What a brilliant name, with an icon of the Colosseum afire too.
Personally, when I got a job due to my knowledge of C++ and ended up coding in VB, I started making functions of AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs and SomeoneSetUpUsTheBomb. I gave up though as they're difficult to spell and remember. They were only called twice and still played hell.
I learnt from this two things.
(a) It's not big
(b) It's not clever
But it's so funny when you're working and you're bored shitless.
No Joke (Score:3, Funny)
Later on this system was renamed. One of the print production managers thought the best way to visualize how the system works was to use the concept of a tank (as in bucket or trough) that all of our data is thrown into and we can go and retrieve it. So our system is now called the Digital Tank.
This is great except for the fact that tank can mean different things like, 'The project tanked.' Or the project is like a giant lumbering hunk of steel that is soooo slllooooow.
Its funny, we are an ad agency. We have copywriters that come up with award winning commericals. But when it comes to naming our own internal software, we can't think of shit.
Spuwa! (Score:2)
So this summer I get invited over to University Of Western Australia to work on a similar project. We argue for days over the name! Eventually I realise we need a name that keeps the 'splancs' nature.
SpUWA.
I even designed a logo - a big yellow splodge representing the area of a point pattern of data composed of small orange and green chunks. But strangely this was too coarse even for the Australians. Pah. We agreed to call it 'Rasp' (R Analysis of Spatial Patterns) but in true Mozilla fashion, pronounce it 'Spuwa!'.
Baz
How about a domain name? (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to own trav.com, which in and of itself makes sense, since Travis is my name. However I got quite a few random emails from people in Sweden who visited my site. "Why Sweden?" I kept asking myself. Then I found out...
In Swedish, "trav" roughly translates to "trot." A popular sport in Sweden is horse racing, but the kind where the jockey rides in a small carriage behind the horse. This is known as "trotting." So fans would check trav.com expecting a horse racing site.
I had used an irrelevant name without even knowing it! Pretty funny huh??
OK maybe you had to be there.
Travis
P.S. Can anyone who knows Swedish language and culture verify any of this?
Mark.asp (Score:2, Funny)
It later became a joke when we were talking about new projects that would "help" people do their jobs (instead of them manually doing something, the computer would do most of it), causing their job to become redundant and they wouldn't be needed anymore.
TWAIN (Score:4, Interesting)
Technology Without An Interesting Name.
worth a chuckle.
Here's one (Score:4, Funny)
Critical Updates (Score:5, Funny)
An oldie but a goodie - xyzzy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:An oldie but a goodie - xyzzy (Score:2)
Different but the same (Score:2)
There's a Designer program used to customize the software -- add fields to the database, change the appearance of the forms, that sort of thing. If you start the Designer program with a command line parameter
Bug in XYZZY 32-bit version (Score:2)
If "Nothing happens" in a 16-bit program, then in the 32-bit version, it should be "65536 times as much nothing happens."
Yes. (Score:2)
Here you go [eeggs.com].
From the Beast itself (Score:3, Funny)
Later they changed "Tool" to "Utility" but we had already laughed at them.
MODCOMP software (Score:2)
People routinely cracked up when I discussed this tool because I pronounced it "testicle."
Duh ... (Score:4, Funny)
Most irrelevant software name? Wouldn't that be Microsoft Works?
PIGCOP (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately, the Duke Nukem reference would become a curse, as it's still in development, with no specified release date (when it's done, damnit!). It also spawned a slimmer web-based cousin called PORKCHOP, but I'd have to hunt through some documentation to remember what that was supposed to stand for
Well, they weren't programs, but... (Score:2)
Ham (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Phirst Contact (Score:2)
CaDAVer (Score:2)
a program called y (Score:5, Funny)
Well, its function is to print this to the screen: You may as well stop typing now.
rm: remove regular file `file101'? y
rm: remove regular file `file102'? y
rm: remove regular file `file103'? y
rm: remove regular file `file104'? y
~> y
You may as well stop typing now.
~> y
You may as well stop typing now.
~> y
You may as well stop typing now.
~> y
Question Answering System (Score:2)
Necklace (Score:2)
bioya (Score:2)
I used it for about a month, not giving any thought to the name, until one day in a fit of boredom I did
bioya
Usage: Blow it out your ass [domain\username]
I got a chuckle every time I used that program for the rest of that contract.
Meanwhile back in the day... (Score:2)
WHIPME (Score:2)
A grad student whose claim to fame was having the moderator of alt.sex.stories forget to remove the student's name on a posting came up with our project name: Whip Me.
We Handle Interactive Pattern Mapping Efficiently.
Only one I got... (Score:2)
Ok, mine isn't terribly clever or anything, but I'll share it anyway. I wrote a little program once for the company my girlfriend worked for to monitor some servers for certain files that were getting transferred to them by mistake. They called the process "black hole monitoring" because these 4 servers seemed to be like black holes for the files. They hadn't managed to figure out what the problem was, and they didn't seem to be trying. They had her and a few of her co-workers monitoring the servers and writing up some sort of problem reports for the files. So, getting to the point, I wrote the little program and didn't know what to call it, so I named it Cygnus, after the U.S.S. Cygnus from the movie The Black Hole. See, told ya it wasn't terribly clever :)
Shitstorm (Score:2)
One user made the jump into the software development group. He was responsible for a lot of these now-critical macros. He had feared the macros would become important to daily processing, being used by people who didn't really understand them (and the afforementioned limitiations didn't help), so he chose some names that he hoped would indicate to the user that they probably shouldn't rely so heavily on those macros.
The best name was shitstorm, but another favorite of mine was trainwreckwaitingtohappen. In another macro, if the operation encountered an error, this was communicated by a clipart eagle swooping down across the spreadsheet, ripping off a clipart businessman's head, and shitting down his neck. (While the sysadmins restricted storage quotas, they did install the vast waste of space that is the MS Office clipart library.) The clipart one is something of an underground classic among the programmers around here.
Eventually he (wisely) quit and went to work somewhere else. To this day those same macros are busily doing whatever it is they do, rude and portentous filenames intact, and the users refuse to fund a project to decypher the macros and write a proper application. (Bad because the macros are starting to fail... trainwreckwaitingtohappen is particularly shaky these days...)
Oh well, he tried to warn them...
File extension story (Score:2)
Everyone was delighted that I actually got the job done, but marketing objected to the
So naturally, it was changed to
Re:biff (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Personal coding standard (Score:2)
Re:Personal coding standard (Score:2)
Perhaps he only thinks he is funny, but actually isnt?
Re:Meanwhile, in reality (Score:2)
Re:Meanwhile, in reality (Score:2)
makes zero sense (Score:2)
I can never remember the differences between my women, either.