Funny and Irrelevant Program Names?

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."

Obvious one?

[Dr. Bent]

fsck

I always lemented that there wasn't a -u option

lipo fat binaries

[topologist]

Oh, there are plenty of funny program names. Perhaps one of the funniest examples is on Mac OS X, where the apple gcc gives you the option of generating "fat" binaries, which are combined ppc and x86 executables (so you can run them both on x86-darwin and ppc for instance). The tool to create a single architecture "thin" binary is called "lipo" (as in liposuction..). I had a good laugh when I saw that.

*cackle*

[skinfitz]

Many years ago on a programming course we visited Belgium with a project based on travel and tourism - the thing was a database for booking holidays etc.

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..."

Good one

[gnovos]

Frustrated trying to get one piece of code to talk to tanother piece, I eventually wrote a middleware app I named the "ensmartenator" for the intended purpose of "ensmartenting" the two pieces' communication api's so that they could understand each other... It was supposed to be a stopgap solution until we could get somone to rewrite the communication APIs... that was about five years ago. The ensmartenator is still it's exceptionally cromulent job to this day.

So far...

[Badge 17]

I've written a program that outputs to a temporary file... to prevent overwriting other temp-files, I call it "temp2.718" -> and I call the outfile ARIZONA.

Think about it.

Debugging utility program

[cjhuitt]

Well, at work I wrote a quick utility to add debugging information to our code, and since I couldn't think of anything better I called it "debuggery". Knowing full well what buggery implies, of course.

Come a few weeks later, there's another utility to remove the debugging information. Called, of course, "rebuggery".

Re:*cackle*

[Ranger Rick]

Me: "Now there's just this one drawback..."

What, can't find it? =)

GGB509

[alacqua]

OK, so nothing about COBOL is funny. It meets the irrelevant criteria, though.

Modules?

[Xunker]

While I can't speak for programs themselves, a code module I wrote about 3 years ago id still kicking around -- the module is named parent_trap (because it checks the validity of parent data of children), with a hidden method named, of all things, halley_mills.

Software named win-something

[Bothari]

Back in the day that every new piece of software for windows 3.1 was named win-something, my then employer used that exact same naming scheme, where the something was a shortening of the subject matter of the app.

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

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Good one

[glenstar]

I named the "ensmartenator" for the intended purpose of "ensmartenting" the two pieces' communication api's so that they could understand each other...

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.

slashdot

[glenstar]

Not really a program, but there's this one website where a bunch of geeks discuss stuff. Apparently pretty popular. It has a pretty funny and *irrelevant* name.. what was it again...?

Once...

[FroMan]

In college I interned in the international systems department for a company, which has OMS (Order Management System), DMS (Distributor Management System), IMS (Inventory Management System), and another *MS, but I forget. Well, my boss had a pet project he wanted done which was to control the parameters between all the systems and be able to handle parameters between sites. Well, the parameter management system was the final name of my project as it neared completion.

My own tool

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

A quick program to merge two types of Database tables:

The Super Helpful Information Tool.

All of my programs have the same name.

[trentfoley]

a.out

I keep 'em straight by remembering filesizes :)

Do variable names count?

[cmpalmer]

I used to get a kick out of naming Boolean class status variables bFailin (in Hungarian notation) so I could write VB code like:

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...

No Joke

[digerata]

I work for an Ad Agency and we wrote a system to manage all of our video and print files. The latest buzzword for that concept is Digital Asset Management. So when we went about creating the administration module, we decided to call it the Grand Organizational Directorate for Digital Asset Management.

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.

Mark.asp

[Boba001]

When I worked for a dotcom company and we were going through some layoffs I had to write a script that basically did someone's job who had been let go (of course, their duties fell on me... and I had no time to manually do them.) It took 3-4 days to write/debug/polish and the result was 10x better than when the actual person was doing the job by hand.

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. ;)

Here's one

[cybermage]

I once wrote a group task and schedule tracker which we called Basic Daily Schedule Manager. It really whipped our office into shape.

Critical Updates

[Webmoth]

As I understand it, Microsoft's Automatic Updates utility was originally called the Critical Update Notification Tool. They quickly changed this one.

An oldie but a goodie - xyzzy

[kireK]

Data General's AOS/VS operating system had an undocumented command named "XYZZY." In the original 16-bit version, the response was: "Nothing happens." In a later 32-bit version, this was amended to: "Twice as much nothing happens."

From the Beast itself

[Thing 1]

My favorite came directly from Microsoft, when they wrote a utility for their WindowsUpdate.com site. They called it the "Critical Update Notification Tool."

Later they changed "Tool" to "Utility" but we had already laughed at them.

Duh ...

[egon]

Most irrelevant software name? Wouldn't that be Microsoft Works?

PIGCOP

[SlightlyMadman]

I had to write a project management & time tracking app for in-house use, a couple years ago. Since I hate the idea of recording every second of my time, I decided to call it Personal Interface for the Graphical Control Of Projects, an homage to Duke Nukem.

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 ;)

a program called y

[oever]

What's so funny about a program called y?
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

EINE and ZWEI

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard of an editor called EINE (German for One) - EINE Is Not Emacs.

The second version was called ZWEI (German for Two) - ZWEI Was EINE Initially.