[ohvirginia]

Is this a reference to something?

I sort of get the feeling you're using voice, but you're the one speaking.

I don't get the italics section.

Also are you suggesting I pick another name? It sort of seems like you're replying to a comment, but this comment appears at top level.

If you can explain more I'll appreciate it. Thanks

Also, please suggest a name if that's your thing. I'm thinking 'metahadron' goes with the voice section.

[_Microft]

No, there are no references in there.

The italis section is just a thing I add to comments sometimes: a few sentences that loosely relate to the thing I am talking about. It can be a quote, an imagined dialog, a flippant comment, ... other examples are at [0][1].

I was annoyed.

I'm physicist and computer projects have the annoying custom of picking names from physics, engineering or what else. Other people also come up with their own names, why should not computer tech people also do this?

Atom editor, Electron framework, Neutrino.js, Crankshaft, ...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23103049

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052357

[ohvirginia]

Thanks for the explanation. I think the italis is cool and fresh.

hmmm, really interesting how you feel about the names. It sounds like that is super annoying.

I never thought about how naming would affect people invested in the names like this.

I don't think I need to defend it, so I'm not trying to here, just sharing that for me, beamsplitter sounds like such a cool word, as if a beam were a physical thing like a rock that could be split. Also something solid in itself, and connotes advanced, possibly war, tech. lasers. I'll going for that connotation. hash functions are usually very pathetically named.

also there's more to this name in this project because my initial design imagined the "beam" of the input, ricocheting around a network of s-boxes getting mixed. It seemed to me like the perfect hash, aesthetically and efficiently, and universal. but to my disappointment, I couldn't get a pure, s-box only design to work. I had to include some "traditional mixing function hacks" like multiplication, rotation and xor. But I wanted to keep the name because it was aspirational.

I can imagine that it must feel like all these annoying computer software people taking all these names that are not from their area, but from your area, and not leaving anything good for the rest. And when they have such high profile already! Like nobody will listen to the poor physicists, especially once all their names are taken, and then it will be more lonely. A nameless space, with nothing left. Sounds pretty sad.

Funny is for me, it seems physics stands above software, so using such names is a way to increase perceived value. But from your view, software has the higher profile.

Thanks for sharing.

[_Microft]

Let me apologize for my complaints. It didn't occur to me that these names might be used out of admiration for a field.

I've also have to admit that physics needs relatively few new names in general which would make picking one a lot easier. There are also naming patterns as well, e.g. for superpartners (new articles in supersymmetry are either prefixed with S- or suffixed with -ion [0] in a predictable way).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpartner

[ohvirginia]

That was cool to read your reply. actually looking back over my code, I see my achievement was better than I thought. I only used addition, and rotation. no mult, nor xor.

technically tho rotation can be thought of as including multiplication and xor. but also not. so I don't know.