D is a very poor name for a language. I appreciate it's late in the day for this and that it has probably been discussed before (not that I could find such a discussion with Google which relates to my point). Although the results for D are fine when googling for things like "D tutorial", more obscure terms are hard to find because "d" is so commonly used as a variable name. Searchability is important though I understand that this might be seen as a trivial point, it is a major human factor. The language would be far better off with a 3 to 5 letter identifier. It will succeed or fail for other reasons but an easily searchable name would help. Dlang as the search term isn't good enough because it's not actually the language's name, people don't use it that much when referring to D, nor do they usually use D2.

Le vendredi 16 mars 2012 à 02:23 +0100, ixid a écrit :
> D is a very poor name for a language. I appreciate it's late in the day for this and that it has probably been discussed before (not that I could find such a discussion with Google which relates to my point). Although the results for D are fine when googling for things like "D tutorial", more obscure terms are hard to find because "d" is so commonly used as a variable name. Searchability is important though I understand that this might be seen as a trivial point, it is a major human factor. The language would be far better off with a 3 to 5 letter identifier. It will succeed or fail for other reasons but an easily searchable name would help. Dlang as the search term isn't good enough because it's not actually the language's name, people don't use it that much when referring to D, nor do they usually use D2.

as you said, we have already talk about this. yes D is not really a good
name for search on the web. Commonly we use these keywords:
- TDPL
- dlang
- d programming
- d tuto
- d wiki

regards

On Mar 15, 2012 9:25 PM, "ixid" <nuaccount@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> D is a very poor name for a language

I like dpl and post tagged with it would turn up pretty well in google. But, as dlang is the website I think that is the best.  Most blogs and fourms have a tag feature and you could always just say it in your post. "D (dlang.org)"  google will pick up the url really nicely.  I don't think the name is a problem, people who write about D just have to get system going and search engines will catch on.  Especially now that the dlang.org site is official the problem will only fade.

ixid:

> Searchability is important though I understand that this might be seen as a trivial point, it is a major human factor. The language would be far better off with a 3 to 5 letter identifier. It will succeed or fail for other reasons but an easily searchable name would help. Dlang as the search term isn't good enough because it's not actually the language's name, people don't use it that much when referring to D, nor do they usually use D2.

Nowdays searchability is an important factor, today if can't be found easily with Google you barely exist. Language names like Clojure are very good because they are meaningful, and being a typo (instead of "closure") they are uncommon and easy to find.

I think in origin D used to be called "Mars" that is probably a bit better for googling. But it was changed to "D" probably to appeal C/C++/C# programmers that love single-letter language names and to make them feel at home :o)

Now I think it's too much late to change the language name again.

To solve the searchability problem the Go language has introduced the convention of using "golang" as search term. In theory D is able to use the same strategy with the "dlang" word, but so far the official way to search for D is to use "D language" or "D programming language".

Bye,
bearophile

On 3/15/12 8:23 PM, ixid wrote:
> D is a very poor name for a language. I appreciate it's late in the day
> for this and that it has probably been discussed before (not that I
> could find such a discussion with Google which relates to my point).

Renaming D at this point would kill it.

Andrei

Do you think a minor renaming like using Dlang as the name consistently would be damaging?

On 3/15/2012 6:23 PM, ixid wrote:
> D is a very poor name for a language. I appreciate it's late in the day for this
> and that it has probably been discussed before (not that I could find such a
> discussion with Google which relates to my point). Although the results for D
> are fine when googling for things like "D tutorial", more obscure terms are hard
> to find because "d" is so commonly used as a variable name. Searchability is
> important though I understand that this might be seen as a trivial point, it is
> a major human factor. The language would be far better off with a 3 to 5 letter
> identifier. It will succeed or fail for other reasons but an easily searchable
> name would help. Dlang as the search term isn't good enough because it's not
> actually the language's name, people don't use it that much when referring to D,
> nor do they usually use D2.

Searching for "d programming" or "d programming language" works very well.

On Friday, 16 March 2012 at 01:23:29 UTC, ixid wrote:
> D is a very poor name for a language.

"D Programming Language", the long name, is used
pretty frequently and is old; if you spell it out,
the search results should get a lot better.

On 03/15/2012 10:17 PM, ixid wrote:
> Do you think a minor renaming like using Dlang as the name consistently would be damaging?
Yes,

Call it D.  But use Dlang whenever you talk/write about it.  And Dlang sounds silly.  Go is still Go even though they site Golang whenever it is mentioned.

On Friday, 16 March 2012 at 02:17:13 UTC, ixid wrote:
> Do you think a minor renaming like using Dlang as the name consistently would be damaging?

Yes. Changing it now is an incredibly stupid idea.