Note by @fastfinge

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

Today's out of context error: "Failed to install weasel". Umm, well, okay. Why do computer people always name everything like this? Am I some day going to be wondering if the weasel demon is working in my computer? It was fine back when everyone knew what bits they were installing and what they were for. But now one package has five hundred dependencies, and all of those packages each depend on a hundred other things, and we're left wondering why we need to install the weasel into our computers, and having no idea why we can't, even if we knew why we should in the first place. Nobody would name a critical function or variable in the code "weasel" or "gimp" or "firefox" or whatever. Maybe we should start enforcing the same convention on packages and programs. "photo-editor" and "web-browser" and so on. I wonder how many casual Linux users know what a glibc or a fprobe is or why they need one?

The Evil Chocolate Cookie @evilcookies98@mastodon.stickbear.me

@fastfinge well, here’s an instruction I had to give recently. Run the file named ass.EXE.

patricus @patricus@mstdn.social

@evilcookies98 @fastfinge whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
what's this file?
an assembler or what?

The Evil Chocolate Cookie @evilcookies98@mastodon.stickbear.me

@patricus @fastfinge actually it’s a thing that takes a lot of the work out of setting up Stardew Valley by installing SMAPI, all of the essentials, and Stardew access

patricus @patricus@mstdn.social

@evilcookies98 @fastfinge ah, this thing!

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

And Windows isn't better. What's the "amdpmf service"? Whatever it is, my computer dies if it's not working. We have more than eight characters now, folks! But then, even when we do use more characters, we just call things the "Goodix Session Service". I hope that never has a problem, because God only knows what a Goodix Session is or why I need to have one. Yes, if it were Linux and open source, I could examine the code. But let's be real: I'm never going to look at the source code of something five layers down the dependency stack. When stuff breaks, impenetrable names are impenetrable, open source or closed.

Adam MacLeod @adam@adamm.cc

@fastfinge And then there's the hundred or so processes that use svchost.exe. Yay for specificness!

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca

@adam I had an old HP laptop, and something on it (maybe part of a driver, or part of the crap they install on consumer laptops, no idea) was called "running_program.exe". Well, uh, full marks for a technically correct name I guess.

Adam MacLeod @adam@adamm.cc

@fastfinge LOL. Wow.

patricus @patricus@mstdn.social

@fastfinge @adam well, it could had been a virus.