10 poorly chosen Ruby gem names

13 Nov 2011 - 2 minute read opinion Tags: ruby

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.

lolita - A sexually precocious young girl

tranny Short form of transmission in the automotive sense; … A transgender person. (the second link listed was to tranny/shemale porn)

asset_hat (pun on “ass hat”, clever)

sex_it_up

womanizer a man who likes many women and has short sexual relationships with them.

trollop A woman perceived as sexually disreputable or promiscuous.

hash_dealer

ball_gag A gag is sometimes worn during some bondage and BDSM roleplays.

clitt

tramp (debatable whether is closer “Lady and the Tramp” or “Tramp Stamp”)

texticle (thanks for the reminder @scottmlikens)

Tips for Naming a 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.

cocaine

girlfriend (okay, the name is appropriate, but seriously, what the?)

smurf

tit

analdiffist

nokogiri, from my understanding a Nokogiri is a saw?

miniskirt

hoe

vegas

loofah

mandy

home_run

hansel

vacation

whoa

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.