The code might be brilliant but the biggest obstacle to adoption is probably the name and the logo.
All I can think is "beef begins to smell after a couple of weeks" and it's hard to overlook that mental imagery when evaluating the vast array of good options in the programming language space.
It may also be considered culturally insensitive to a noticeable percentage of software engineers, which could hurt the adoption rate.
I'm a huge fan of C#, so this really caught my attention!
But I also have to say that the name logo are... offputting. I don't know why exactly; I'm not a vegetarian or religious or anything like that, and the name doesn't bring anything negative in particular to mind (hell, I love eating beef!), but it just feels... wrong somehow.
I am a carnivore, but the name rings pretty well for me. Beef is a simple food: it's not fancy and it doesn't need to be dressed up to be enjoyed. It's also enjoyable on a visceral level, and can hurt you if you're not careful with it. If this language lives up to promise it seems like it fits.
Not sure where you live, but in Europe beef is expensive, certainly "simple food" is not the first thing that springs to mind! I'm sure I've read somewhere it's one of the more expensive meats to produce, per kg, especially compared to chicken and pigs.
Just append " lang" when you Google it. And I'm pretty sure religious food prohibitions don't generally extend to using software that happens to share a name with the prohibited food.
This complaint makes the top 3 comments on every post about a new programming language. It's tiresome.
It's a bit more than that. I'm a vegetarian, so obviously I have a bias, but I think it's objectively true that the beef industry in America is in a pretty bad place. I consider it "horrific", personally, though reasonable people disagree.
Would "veal" be an acceptable name?
When I think of eating beef in 2020, I think of a person whose freedom to eat whatever pleases them is more important than human health, suffering of intelligent animals and the environment.
Allow me a bad analogy. If I interviewed someone for a senior engineering role but they went out of their way to mention that they had named one of their children "Stalin" -- that would be kind of a red flag for me.
So to me, naming your pet project "Beef" is kind-of tone deaf at best.
And at worst, it's thumbing your nose at political correctness: "Haha I named my project Beef because beef is great and fine and if you disagree you're thin-skinned and blindly following the crowd."
I think the issue is a lot more complicated than that.
I'm Vegan and the name doesn't bother me at all to be honest. I do not agree with the downvoting of parent though, as his reasoning is er.. reasonable.
Is it? Was the question about how acceptable would "veal" be as a name implying that it would not be acceptable at all? What about “lamb”? Or “pork”? (PORK is the long-awaited Well-Done BEEF, according to https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ozone/www/object-syste...)
Emphasis on notable percentage. That percentage is likely so small that it is easily enough to ignore. It is also not close enough to a "protected class" under USA law (and I assume many other countries too), that is totally fine in the legal sense to ignore those people for the purpose of programming language awareness.
> If the author does not consider it culturally insensitive, then there is no problem.
The author can do what he wants, but if he wants adoption, then it would behoove him to consider cultural sensitivity, especially if it is offensive to enough people to stifle adoption.
I would say that paragraph 2 is completely wrong. Why would you want to filter out people who are culturally sensitive from your community? Because you don't want to have to consider alternate viewpoints?
It would behoove the above poster to consider cultural sensitivity in selecting to use the word 'behoove', which contains 'hoove', which is a delicacy from cows in some cultures, as well.
And can I choose my own culture? Like say "this is what I endorse and believe in" and that be my culture? Or does this only apply to policically registered "-ism" classes (race, religion etc)?
If so, I belong to the culture that considers it insensitive to shit on things for light-hearted naming themes as if they are of any relevance next to a million other adoption metrics that are more objective, assuming the author even cares to weigh adoption vs creative license in the first place.
No one needs to "flip their shit" in order for it to be a bad name. I just don't like the sound of the word, for example, and that unpleasant feeling ends up tainting my opinion of the product.
If yes, then either you didn't care much in the first place, or you are indeed, flipping your shit.
And no one said it was a bad name, but that it could be considered culturally insensitive - two ambiguities away from actuallybeing the thing it mightconsidered to be.
All I can think is "beef begins to smell after a couple of weeks" and it's hard to overlook that mental imagery when evaluating the vast array of good options in the programming language space.
It may also be considered culturally insensitive to a noticeable percentage of software engineers, which could hurt the adoption rate.