Josh Haberman

I hate naming things. I’m starting to realize that pbstream is outgrowing its name. That’s the one thing I always thought was brilliant about the iPod’s name. When the iPod started playing video it was no problem — it’s a pod! Why shouldn’t a pod play video? There’s no way to outgrow the name “iPod.” Brilliant.

I had no such luck with pbstream. The tagline is currently:

pbstream - a stream-oriented implementation of protocol buffers.

It’s true that offering streaming semantics is one distinguishing feature of my implementation, but the way it’s growing it’s no longer really “stream-oriented.” It will offer both stream-oriented and structure-oriented semantics. Both will be equally supported/encouraged — it will be a matter of what best suits your needs.

If anything, the number one distinguishing feature of my implementation is that it is minimal. It gives you a set of tools to use whatever paradigm is the right trade-off for you. It gives you building blocks to assemble as you see fit. There are never “riders” — things like memory management that you have to take along with the parts you really want.

So what’s in a name? Desired characteristics:

• Unique, reasonably Googleable.
• Communicates that it is a protobuf implementation, and if possible communicates the philosophy described above.
• The name (or a reasonable abbreviation thereof) makes for a nice prefix that can be appended to all my identifiers. Right now it’s pbstream_this and pbstream_that.

Originally I just called it “pb” but that was a tad bit too generic. I slightly like “pblab” (communicates that it gives you building blocks for forging your own strategies), but I dislike the connotation that it is unfinished, unpolished, not production quality.

Perhaps I could give it a name, but keep using “pb_” in my identifiers. It could also help me organize the names of the different parts. I could use names like:

• pb_stream_parser_* for the stream parser.
• pb_struct_* for the code that defines an in-memory structure.

I kind of like that. But I still need a name for the package itself that is better than “pb”. Ideas?