Sunday, May 18, 2008

Russell's Postulate #45: Naming things

I was doing some serious geeking out after putting Emily to bed and was reading about Currying in Scala. Don't go to either of those links, they are not the point and you probably wont' care. The point is that Currying is some idea that someone thought of once. From the Scala documentation I was reading

This style of ... blah blah blah ... is called currying after its promoter, Haskell B. Curry, a logician of the 20th century, even though the idea goes back further to Moses Schönfinkel and Gottlob Frege.

What this basically says is that Herr Schönfinkel and Herr Frege had this really kick ass idea but crappy names. This brought me to conclude Russell's Postulate #45

A good idea or invention will need to be thought of repeatedly until stumbled across and popularized by someone with a catchy name.

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