What's In a Name
Posted by Dan Creswell in Philosophy, Technology, tags: Engineering, Philosophy, TechnologyAs soon as we give something a name, it becomes open to abuse and misuse.
Vendors can claim they are doing it and support it, developers can claim they do it, use it or implement it. There are a bunch of ready examples: Agile, XP, SOA and REST. Naming something makes it easy to ignore or forget its underpinnings, the elements that deliver value.
As a martial artist, I’m familiar with this pattern of behaviour: various people claim to practice and teach authentic Silat, Karate, Kung Fu, Escrima and so on. Inevitably some of them are exposed as pretenders. One of the more notable martial artists, Bruce Lee was sufficiently concerned about this that he gave serious consideration to leaving his approach to martial art (Jeet Kune Do) unnamed*.
Is it worth naming things? Might we be better served by making our knowledge, approaches and philosophies visible for others without naming them to adopt or not as they see fit? Would it reduce the number of valueless certifications, buzzword cv’s and endless wars over which way is the way and who’s doing it right?
* Jeet Kune Do (1997) ‘Actually, I never wanted to give a name to the kind of Chinese gung fu that I have invented, but for convenience sake, I still call it “Jeet Kune Do”. However, I want to emphasize that there is no distinction between jeet kune do and any other kind of gung fu, for I strongly object to formality, and to the idea of distinction of branches.’

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