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Comment by wiredfool | Hacker News Reader

Rpms, apks, debs, msi, exe, tarballs, zips, jars, wars...

Well these are at least more or less known and widely used (though I agree if you never worked with Java that .JAR and .WAR will be confusing).

But when a language ecosystem opts for cutesy niche names then they just end up confusing everybody, including some of their own users.

I think JAR (Java Archive) and WAR (Web Archive) make sense.

But wheel? It's a wheel of cheese, because pypi used to be called cheeseshop? I mean sure, but doesn't it feel a bit like that 20-year-old tatoo that you got during your teens that you got mixed feelings about today?

My suggestion: Call them pypacks -- extension: .pyp

JAR itself is a cutesy reference. You put your code in a jar, get it? WAR is perhaps not a cute reference, but it hints at what you'll be facing...

That's why I said jar/war are kind of the exception. They are still recognizable for many though, whereas Nix and Python's names are just WTF.

> I mean sure, but doesn't it feel a bit like that 20-year-old tatoo that you got during your teens that you got mixed feelings about today?

That's exactly how I view all these "quirky" names btw.

Ooooo I like that. pypacks

And then everyone will start confusing them with pip.

Though I suppose people already struggle to keep pip vs pip3 vs pip3.9 vs pip3.10 vs pip3.${n} vs pipx vs pipenv straight.

Jokes aside, I feel like the names on python are no more terrible than what Java does.

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