alt Hacker NewsEven GNU is a recursive acronym, Emacs a convoluted one... What's Perl, Python, Java... all about? Remember how JavaScript was named? Don't mention Go (go-lang) or Pascal... Git, Mercurial, CVS anyone?
I believe this makes much ado about nothing.
Replies
Java is easy - named after the coffee beans of the coffee they used to drink...
CVS (noticed already mentioned by a sibling comment) is just an abbreviation.
Python - well Monty Python
Pascal is probably the most sensible name, as far as traditional naming schemes go. Names after Blaise Pascal, mathematician and one of the two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Pretty fair association and tribute.
Git as a name is our daily reminder that pre-mainstream programmers were rebellious against the mainstream (to put it as generously as I could) before corporate interests took over. but i encourwge you to look up that story yourself.
The 2000s Plan9 community asserts "Gnu is Not Useful" as the correct expansion.
Perl stands for “practical extraction and report language”
"Concurrent Versions/Versioning System" is a pretty reasonable one, though.