[codezero]

I have a hard time believing there is cause for confusion here, have Physicists been stumped by Amazon Redshift? I'm not being facetious, I just don't see how a product name that is niche to people using Amazon services is likely to confuse people.

Also, CS hardly owns the greek letter lambda, it like many greek letters has been used for many products and features over the years. Delta is an airline, but they're doing OK, among others. I am just curious what your issue with this is, and if you can come up with some concrete scenarios where this could really confuse people.

[mehh]

When I've done searches for redshift I have actually ended up having to clarify which type I mean.

As someone who does use AWS a lot and lambda functions, then yes, overloading the term is dumb. I'll also probably end up using Lambda functions.

[yzzxy]

The meaning of "lambda" in computer science is functionally (no pun intended) similar enough to what amazon is selling that people learning programming and nontechnicals or even IT pros who work with programmers will inevitably be confused.

[codezero]

It seems like you're seriously saying that people who are studying computer science lack the ability to tell the difference.

Naming the product something that closely resembles its functionality seems like a great idea for a product. It's still Amazon Lambda, and I think it's very unlikely that people will simply refer to it as "Lambda." If CS students find themselves hopelessly confused by this product name, they are going to have a real hard time tying their own shoes.

If you search for Y Combinator, luckily, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_combinator still shows up on the first page of results, I expect the same will be true for Lambda, so I can confidently say we won't lose a generation of CS students to this faux pas.

[yzzxy]

I'm not arguing they will not be able to tell the difference... I'm arguing it will cause confusion at some point, and maybe that's a negative externality of naming this product "Lambda." Nobody said "lose a generation of CS students."

And, as I've noticed in the past, searching for "y combinator" + any language name will often keep useful results away until you finally block this site. I'm not sure if this is still comprehensively true, but it seemed so to me at one point. So there is a very real impact on search results that can happen.

[ashr]

I hear there is a river named Amazon in Southern Hemisphere and there are people landing in Seattle for river expeditions.

[yzzxy]

Yes, but that river does not sell software to run an online store. That's about as close to Amazon.com as AWS Lambda is to a Lambda function.

If you tried to sell ecommerce software under the name Amazon, you would get a cease-and-desist very quickly.

[codezero]

I was being overly sarcastic there, sorry about that. I just don't think this will ever be a problem for people, if anything Amazon adopting it may help people learn more about it, all the same, I guess it could go either way, I'll quiz some candidates in a few years to see if they ran into Lambda as a stumbling point :)

[duaneb]

I can't believe people reuse names and phrases either!!