Name suggestions for VS Code

After thinking about it, I am firmly in “Team Boring”, i.e. leave the extension be and give the GitHub org an easily discoverable name like “JuliaIDE”.

My anecdotal evidence suggests that the previous “Juno <-> Atom” situation was already confusing enough. This was an added complication when moving my team to Julia in my last job.

(OT: The worst name in the Julia ecosystem is JuliaPro IMHO. I realize that this is the wrong thread for this and possibly even the wrong forum but I think this name is actively leading beginners down the wrong path. I can imagine that we lost quite a few people at the start of their journey because of the confusing facts that JuliaPro cannot do what regular Julia can and that the pros aren’t using the former. TL;DR: Names are important!)

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This depends on how you interpret what “Pro” refers to: I always thought on people working in professional environments, where IT people prefer packaged solutions with “batteries included” and possible support - which paid plans of JuliaPro provide indeed.

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That is surely the correct interpretation of the name.

At the same time there are lots of (consumer) products where a “Pro” suffix just indicates that this is a slightly shinier, more expensive version of another product (see Airpods Pro, Windows 10 Pro). Thus, beginners seem to expect to get a more featureful Julia when they download JuliaPro instead of the more constrained environment that it actually aims to be. Calling it something like “JuliaEnterprise” might avoid this ambiguity…

If you search for “JuliaPro” on this forum, you will find tons of beginners getting stumped.

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On balance I am also in the “no name” camp - but if the team decides they want a dedicated name then I suggest Jove.

Rationale: in this slide of his excellent Juliacon presentation, Sebastian put forth three criteria for a new name:

  • starts with J
  • relation to Juno and/or Jupiter
  • short and recognizable

In Roman mythology, Jove is a synonym for Jupiter, the capo-di-tutti-capi of gods. (Actually if I recall correctly Jupiter is a contraction of Jove-Pater or Father Jove in Latin.) His wife is Juno.

“Jove” is short and recognizable, sounds kind of similar to Code and for those who need everything to be an acronym, it could mean “Julia VS Code Editor” - no idea what the O stands for though. :smile:

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I’m in favor of leaving the name the way it is.

If I had to pick a new name, I would go with the repurposed Julia Studio.

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Along these lines, perhaps following whatever naming/branding standards exist for the ecosystem.

For vscode, go to All categories Extensions - Visual Studio Marketplace and search for different languages. I find that there is “branding” on almost none of the primary language extensions. Rust, python, dart, C#, ruby, etc. are all just that. e.g. https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust etc.

You can find exceptions, but it is pretty clear what the standard is for the “primary” extension in vscode. I suspect that if there was branding involved, no matter what it was, that people would confusingly think that it is not the standard “julia extension” or perhaps something a commercial vendor is selling.

Also, I lost track of the number of times people thought Juno and Atom extensions were different ways to access julia due to the branding.

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YES! That is cleary my favorite option, if it was just me I would rename this instant!

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Also, I’m hearing the “we don’t need a name” fraction loud and clear. I’m personally quite sympathetic to that view, but lets keep the ideas coming and then we (the team) will sit down when things have quieted down a bit and figure this out :slight_smile:

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Plus one for Team Boring.

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Same here.
It seems natural (for new users?) to google julia vscode. Keep it simple?

Yeah, I can relate. I’m new to Julia and if I were to look for a plugin I would directly search up “Julia” or something of that sort. As for me searching in other programming languages would be the same mind reference to search up the programming language name itself and just scroll until I find an interesting one or one that I am in need of.

I wouldn’t think of any other things that would come necessary to me in regards of the name.

VS Julia

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Team Non-Boring vote for Demeter. I am may be biased…

Also Prometheus, for he giveth fire and knowledge to mere mortals.

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Quoting EricForgy quoting David (Anthoff, I assume):

We will not change the name of the extension itself in the marketplace, we would probably change the name of the publisher and call the overall effort this new name. We would also use that name in things like discourse forum etc. But the extension in the marketplace itself would still just be called Julia.

So as far as I understand, the Julia VS Code plugin will always appear as “Julia” from within VS Code. The name discussed here would be used for things like the website, the GitHub organisation, and generally in statements like “I did this in [Julia plugin for VS Code], and then that happened”.

The last example demonstrates what I meant by “clumsy”. For statements like this one, you want a short, standardised name like “VS Code Julia” or “Julia Code” or any branded name like “Juno”, “Jules”, etc., so there’s no decision fatigue for the author and easier parsing for the readers.

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My ordered set of preferences (subject to agreement with name owners, if any):

  • Juno
  • Julia Code
  • Julia Studio

Not neede to be a marketing guy to forecast that the first option in particular would faster user migration to the new IDE.

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Fiorentina supporter here, and I couldn’t agree more

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I don’t have strong feelings about the name. I would guess that “Juno” would be somewhat confusing, so maybe “Juno 2.0” or “Juno Studio” – or “Juno Code”. “Code” has the advantage of having a single syllable (and perhaps also connect to Codespaces). However, “Studio” will perhaps better cover plans of extensions such as a “Julia notebook”. And “Julia Studio” is probably also ok.

This crossed my mind:

Julio: A Julia plugin for Visual Studio

But how to pronounce “Julio”?

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Why not just “JuliaCode”?
Fits inline with JuliaRun, JuliaTeam, etc. Also Code is slang for VSCode I think. But it follows the naming conventions for Julia packages.

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Julia.VS
Julia VS
VS Julia