This was an April Fools post. It's no longer April Fools, so the post gets a very clear disclaimer at the top.
Hey folks. I've been working on jank for some years now. With every new blog post that goes out, I see people provide feedback on the name. This always perplexed me. It's been clear to me that the name jank doesn't land well with people, but I've struggled to understand why. What's wrong with it? Well, recently, this has been explained to me. Afterward, I quickly began searching for a better name. Happily, I can now announce that I've found a suitable replacement. From here on out, jank will be renamed to GRADY. For those who don't understand why this is important, let me explain.
jank is bad?
Before we talk about the new name, I need to lay bare my chest here. This is my fault. I had never realized that jank meant something negative. However, as an astute reader contributes here, "jank describes undesirable, problematic, glitchy UX." Who would name a language after that?! I feel foolish. I didn't know what it meant, but I liked the sound of it.
I should've realized this sooner. Historically, multiple people have called the name jank unfortunate, but it wasn't clear to me why. Well, better late than never.
GRADY
I'd like to explain the new name side by side with the old name, to underline how I have addressed each of the problems with jank. So, let me introduce GRADY now. I'm so enraptured by this new name. GRADY is a gradient language. In GRADY, we can span the whole spectrum of dynamism, with some parts of our code being fully dynamic and garbage collected, while other parts of our code are statically typed with explicit memory management. This fits the design of the language like a glove. A tailored glove.
Etymology
As I learned, jank has an overwhelmingly negative connotation. The first entry on Urban Dictionary spells this out.
broken; unnecessarily redundant, superfluous, or meaningless; stupid or ridiculously moronic; bootleg or of questionable quality
A European reader also pointed out that, in Dutch, jank means "to whine". Layers and layers of issues here.
Well, I've checked on Google Translate. In Dutch, GRADY means GRADY, which is perfect. In fact, some research has shown that GRADY is a given name of Irish origin, meaning "noble" or "renowned."
GRADY is capitalized
Long time readers have noticed that I never capitalize the name jank. This has been an intentional choice for aesthetic branding reasons. However, now equipped with the knowledge of jank meaning broken or useless, its universally lowercase nature only seeks to further diminish its value. This is why GRADY is always uppercase. GRADY is big, but not heavy. It's sturdy and reliable. It's also much easier to see from a distance, which should help with adoption.
GRADY is enterprise ready
I'm relieved that a knowledgeable enterprise developer identified that jank would not be approved by any suits. I have kept this in mind, specifically, when choosing a new name. I can confidently say that every suit plays golf with someone named GRADY. The name will feel familiar, which is important when one is introducing a new technology into the enterprise software world.
jank sounds like junk
When you look closely, you can see that jank is only one letter away from junk. To some, it even sounds like junk. I didn't think this would be an easy mistake to make. When someone first typed junk instead of jank, I thought it was a typo. The next time it happened, I figured maybe the author was non-native to English. The third time, I knew something was up. Not anymore, folks. Nobody is going to misinterpret GRADY to mean junk. They have no letters in common.
Speaking of being one letter away, have you folks realized the danger that other languages are in?
- Rust is one letter away from Lust and Bust, which are certainly NSFW and may explain Rust's long compile times.
- C is one letter away from F, which actually makes sense now.
- Lua is one letter away from Lug, which sounds heavy and clunky.
- Go is one letter away from No, which is not corporate-friendly nomenclature.
- Java is one letter away from Lava, which, in many ways, is actually more appealing than Java.
- Scala is one letter away from Scama and Scaba, both of which sound like diseases.
- Dart is one letter away from both Fart and Dirt, which should scare anyone away.
GRADY, though. That's one letter away from GRAVY, which means "good, great, or delicious", according to Urban Dictionary.
Other benefits
So, in terms of practical differences, the file extension of GRADY sources will change from .jank to .GRR. This will help keep GRADY code lean and mean.
While I hadn't yet publicized how jank users would be called, I was originally thinking janksters or maybe jankies. None of that matters, now, since we'll all be part of the GRADY bunch. That's how we became the GRADY bunch.
Thanks for leading us here
I appreciate you all for pointing this out to me. jank was an awful name. jank might as well have been named folly, for how bad it was. Well, if that weren't already the name of one of the most popular C++ libraries in the world, anyway.
At least now that we've solved this problem, we can get to more pressing matters, like a new logo.