The name "Phobos" in user-facing docs

John Gabriele jgabriele at fastmail.fm
Fri Jan 12 23:15:41 UTC 2018


On Friday, 12 January 2018 at 22:24:16 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> On Friday, 12 January 2018 at 21:24:40 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
>>  1. It has its own name. Phobos. This is unusual. I don't know 
>> of any other language who's std lib has any name other than 
>> "the {lang} standard library". Why does it have its own 
>> distinct name, and why do I (as a user) need to know it?
>
> Because Walter Bright's company is named Digital Mars, D was 
> initially named "Mars programming language". I am fairly 
> certain that's the original reason for the name of the library. 
> After all, why change it now when it's in common use? Where I 
> live we have a saying: "A dear child has many names".

I don't think it should be changed, just removed from a few 
user-facing spots to increase clarity and remove any doubt about 
what's the D standard library.

Links and titles should just say "D Standard Library" or "Library 
Reference", and not mention "Phobos". It's a distraction to new 
users or possibly-returning-users who were around during the 
D1->D2 std lib transition.

On <https://dlang.org/phobos/index.html>, it appears to me that 
it shouldn't say "phobos" anywhere (it's only in the top 
paragraphs as it is). Though maybe Walter or others like Phobos 
mentioned there for nostalgic reasons.

Anyhow, my comments aren't intended as complaints, but rather 
what I see as low-hanging easy marketing improvements for D.



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