Another of these is “Does it look unique enough that people will naturally remember it?”
I’m not attached to the mantis shrimp any of the other proposals specifically, but when I imagine myself seeing the hummingbird mascot at a conference or on merch, what it honestly registers as is “generic bird image that I will forget about within 5 seconds of looking away from it”.
It’s not about the specific image or representation of it either, in today’s oversaturated branding market, our brains just get used to glazing over mascots by default, and the bar for standing out and getting past that is pretty high. The original post here mentions “O’Reilly books popularized used any old random animal they had a print of lying around” - but the thing is, it worked very effectively. When people looked at an O’Reilly cover, it was hard to ignore as an animal you’d seen a million times already (it usually wasn’t), it invited attention, and in turn, a strong association between the animal and the language or technology.
A hummingbird would be a bad fit for Julia conceptually as well: the two things they’re best known for are being tiny and lightweight, and being able to quickly accelerate in a direction without needing warmup time.
Julia is not known for being an especially tiny language or runtime (unlike Lua for eg.), nor particularly lightweight (among other things, a .julia folder balloons up rapidly even with casual usage - with reasons, but that and other things do make “lightweight” hard to defend).
And one of the typical problems when Julia is promoted as a “fast” language is that a lot of people come in expecting an insantly fast and nimble-feeling language, which is why things like TTFX hit especially hard psychologically and are disappointing as a newcomer. Reinforcing this interpretation of “fast” (however subtly) with a hummingbird imagery would be misleading, and add to this problem of mistaken expectations.
I do like the axolotl idea a lot. I don’t know much about their behaviour or characteristics, so can’t speak for a conceptual fit, but they’re unique-looking, adorable in a lot of people’s eyes, and surprisingly underused in popular imagery. (And at least to me they look like a neuron with its dendrites and an axon body, so a slight nod to the neuroscience side of Julia.)
It doesn’t look to me like they’re doing any such thing, just expressing an opinion like all of us are.
Fair enough. I would just like to propose that there is a process now that leads to a result - since this is going on for 5 years now. I would propose this:
We all will probably agree on an animal mascot being something inofficial, e.g., it is a “can have” - not a “must have”.
It looks as if by now all sensible options have been named (I picked up “Mantissa” from an existing suggestion here).
Now a good process is needed to enable community decision - if it is to be a community decision? Maybe have a GitHub repo with minimum required content for a mascot, e.g., image file, naming, one paragraph intro, longer description supporting the choice. Then the candidates can be branches and finally there is a merging PR…
That seems a bit of a stretch. Interest clearly waxes and wanes. Posts to this topic stopped 5 years ago and there was a previous 2 year gap before that. It was only revived again 3 days ago with a “necro-post”. So not exactly 5 years of continuous discussion.
If we are to have a community decision, perhaps the first question to answer is whether we really actually want/need an animal as a formally adopted mascot for Julia.
But on the other hand, before O’Reilly puts that dodo on a cover (as Dan wrote above), maybe be clear about something unofficial? Personally, before I see another cat or something cuddly like Ferris, I would prefer something where you may need to look twice, and then it suddenly dawns on you, how cool it really is (just like ____ )
Tbh, better not have a mascot for Julia to avoid something like the Lisp community arguing over their unofficial mascot, and I’d say the three colourful balls are good enough for Julia!
Crustaceans, mollusks, tardigrades, etc., are either ugly or easily mocked, or both. We should choose something whimsical, attractive, and easily caricatured (in the sense of a logo or plush toy).
Since this thread has resurfaced repeatedly over the years, I opened a separate poll to get a clearer signal on whether people want an unofficial community mascot at all, and if so which candidates they prefer:
I kept it separate so the vote would not get buried in the long historical discussion here.
