There's something weird in the Ruby community that has been driving me crazy
since I started using the language. There's this habit, by what I hope is a
minority, of choosing "clever" gem names instead of useful or descriptive
names. I'm not above a good pun or play on words, but some gem names range
between confusingly stupid and utterly aggrevating.
Probably offensive
I basically spent about 30 minutes typing borderline or completely NSFW terms
into the rubygems.org search box to come up with this
list. It's a little longer than 10 gems, I didn't anticipate finding so many
"gems" (so to speak).
For slang or singular terms, I will include the definition according to Google, of the term to the right of
the gem.
Can you make an incredibly obtuse pun on the name of the library you're wrapping?
Grab a photo album from your childhood, find a picture of your bedroom, what's the name of the first thing you see?
Are you coding in between bong rips? Choose a word that sounds the funniest to your stoner friends.
Are you British? What is the local slang term for "slut?"
Go to 4chan, pick the 7th word of a random post to /b/
Are you a white guy from Memphis who loves Asian culture? Use the Japanese name of the nearest household appliance.
Just plain stupid
While searching for blatantly offensive gem names, I found a number of other
"wonderfully" named gems that don't offend so much as they confuse. There was such a
plethora of simple nouns which can make searching for documentation
exceptionally difficult for novice users.
I don't have much of an idea what half of these gems do, and I can't be
troubled to dig into what the use case is for "cocaine", "vegas" or "whoa", at least from
the Ruby perspective that is.