Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 10:15 UTC (Thu) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
In reply to: Emacs discusses web-based development workflows by halla
Parent article: Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Really? Darn it. So, bring me up to speed, what is the New Hotness terminology that "the kids" are using these days for the generic/collective form of GitHub/GitLab/Gitea/Bitbucket/Sourcehut style collaborative development and code hosting services?

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 10:25 UTC (Thu) by jafd (subscriber, #129642) [Link] (1 responses)

I think it's github. Like all graphical manipulation is "photoshop" even if gimp is used. Or like your mp4's and mp3's all become "tapes" if there is sex or damning evidence on them.

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 15:58 UTC (Thu) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link]

In informal usage, maybe.

But GIMP and Krita don't call themselves "photoshops", and technical articles comparing the features, advantages and drawbacks of similar programs won't call them "photoshops" either. They'll call them "graphics editors" or "photo manipulation" software. Gimp and Krita might be compared to Photoshop, or referred to as Photoshop replacements, referencing Photoshop as a specific branded product, but the generic class of software won't be called that by any technical publication.

And LWN is, if nothing else, a technical publication.

And, to the best of my knowledge, "forge" is still the best generic word we have for that particular class of software. I could see "hub" as a possible replacement - although I've not personally seen that in the wild. But using a specific brand name that is still in active use (unlike your "tapes" example) as a generic technical term doesn't seem right.

So if "forge" is, as the parent commenter suggests "out of touch" or (as another commenter has put it "archaic"), I'm still not clear on what the up-to-date correct industry replacement term is.

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 15:19 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (14 responses)

"Forge" goes back to SourceForge, and that's ancient history. Using that word to describe current collaboration platforms is, of course, being deliberatly archaic.

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 15:31 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link] (13 responses)

> Using that word to describe current collaboration platforms is, of course,
> being deliberatly archaic.

sorry you didn't like the word choice that I (and others) used, but it was meant to be inclusive, not archaic.

also, you didn't answer the question asked above:

> So, bring me up to speed, what is the New Hotness terminology that "the kids"
> are using these days for the generic/collective form of GitHub/GitLab/Gitea/Bitbucket/Sourcehut
> style collaborative development and code hosting services?

so, if we don't want to be hopelessly archaic, what term do you suggest?

thanks,

jake

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 16:02 UTC (Thu) by samlh (subscriber, #56788) [Link]

I don't think there is a short term in common use, so I recommend using a descriptive phrase like web-based code collaboration platform and/or listing examples. (My younger coworkers have never heard of SourceForge.)

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 2, 2021 17:13 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (10 responses)

"collaboration platform" -- and I was under the impression that "forge" was a quote from the actual discussion, not an editorial term.

Forges

Posted Sep 2, 2021 20:10 UTC (Thu) by peniblec (subscriber, #111147) [Link] (9 responses)

To me “collaboration platform” sounds more generic and can apply to much more than tools geared specifically toward managing code.

“Forge” is used in the wild; cf. FSF’s forge evaluation, sourcehut describing themselves as a “software forge”, and the software forge performance index they publish.

I find the term fine. Wikipedia does trace its usage back to SourceForge (et al.), but that does not make the word invalid; that just gives it some history.

Forges

Posted Sep 5, 2021 8:33 UTC (Sun) by samlh (subscriber, #56788) [Link] (8 responses)

Well, let's see what everyone calls themselves, shall we?

https://github.com/about

> "... the largest and most advanced development platform in the world."

https://about.gitlab.com/

> "GitLab is The DevOps platform"

https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/devops-platform/

> "... It is a full software development lifecycle & DevOps tool in a single application. "

https://bitbucket.org/product/guides/getting-started/over...

> "Bitbucket Cloud is a Git based code hosting and collaboration tool, built for teams."

https://launchpad.net/

> "Launchpad is a software collaboration platform that provides:..."

https://gogs.io/

> "Gogs is a painless self-hosted Git service"

https://docs.pagure.org/pagure/

> "Pagure is a light-weight git-centered forge based on pygit2."

https://gitea.io/en-us/

> "Gitea is a community managed lightweight code hosting solution written in Go."

https://sourcehut.org/

> "Welcome to sourcehut, the hacker's forge! ... This suite of open source tools is the software development platform you've been waiting for."

https://www.phacility.com/

> "Phabricator is a set of tools for developing software. It includes applications for code review, repository hosting, bug tracking, project management, and more."

My conclusion:

There is no agreement on what this sort of service should be called, and calling it a "Forge" is relatively uncommon.

I personally first saw the term "Forge" be used to describe the concept as part of this article.

Based on this, I stand by my suggestion that a descriptive phrase be used instead.

Some relatively clear phrases from the descriptions above: "code hosting and collaboration tool", "software collaboration platform"

Forges

Posted Sep 5, 2021 9:55 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> There is no agreement on what this sort of service should be called, and calling it a "Forge" is relatively uncommon.

IME it is the standard term. Did you know the collective noun for owls is a parliament? How many other collective nouns do you know? Just because you've never met a word doesn't mean you can say it is uncommon (the collators of The Complete Oxford Dictionary ended up with egg on their faces due to this mistake!)

> I personally first saw the term "Forge" be used to describe the concept as part of this article.

You live and learn. The average person uses about 20,000 in their normal vocabulary. They also have a complete vocabulary of over 50,000. I don't know how many English words there are in common use but it's probably at least two orders of magnitude higher - don't forget one of the reasons English is so hard to learn is it has far more words than almost any other language ...

Welcome to computer jargon - "forge" is a well-understood word.

(And don't forget. That's WHY English has so many words. We repurpose words from elsewhere. Like German creates massively long complex nouns. Don't start applying German habits to English ...)

Cheers,
Wol

Forges

Posted Sep 5, 2021 12:34 UTC (Sun) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (1 responses)

> Like German creates massively long complex nouns.

"BH", "U-Bahn", "S-Bahn", and "Handy" are all perfectly respectable words in German, and words like "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz" or "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" don't see much daily use outside of their originating contexts.

Forges

Posted Sep 6, 2021 10:03 UTC (Mon) by bosyber (guest, #84963) [Link]

both of those latter would probably quickly become something like RiFEwAUG and DDSGK; yes long words are fun at times, but shortening them for daily use definitely is part of the fun!

Forges

Posted Sep 7, 2021 14:52 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (4 responses)

Thanks for putting this list together, very useful. My conclusion: "forge" is the only _single-word_ used. All the other names are made of multiple words with adjectives on top of some placeholder like "service" or "application".

> I personally first saw the term "Forge" be used to describe the concept as part of this article.

Yet you knew instantly what it meant, which is what matters.

There's also a lot of history behind it, I mean it has not just been made-up. It's not an acronym. So "forge" is really a winner.

> Some relatively clear phrases from the descriptions above: "code hosting and collaboration tool", "software collaboration platform"

You can keep using something longer and we'll likely understand you too, which matters too. Then we'll see what wins; that's just how language evolves.

Forges

Posted Sep 7, 2021 18:08 UTC (Tue) by samlh (subscriber, #56788) [Link] (3 responses)

> Yet you knew instantly what it meant, which is what matters.

Please don't make assumptions.

I was able to figure it out from context because I've been around long enough to have used SourceForge (towards the tail end of it's relevence), and I was astonished that anyone would want to call themselves something reminiscent of it.

> You can keep using something longer and we'll likely understand you too, which matters too. Then we'll see what wins; that's just how language evolves.

I'm aware that is how language works. However, I wanted to make it clear that I feel it would be a shame if the language goes that direction.

After all, I'm aware that peek, peak, and pique are turning into synonyms, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

Forges

Posted Sep 7, 2021 19:10 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> I was able to figure it out from context

Yeah language is all about context.

> However, I wanted to make it clear that I feel it would be a shame if the language goes that direction.

But again zero single-word alternative to suggest.

"Software Collaboration Platform" embeds all the necessary context in the name which is redundant and why people tend to prefer shorter names.

The typical (and horrible) "solution" for this neologism issue is: SCP. Glad we can easily avoid it this time.

Forges

Posted Sep 7, 2021 20:17 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

> I've been around long enough to have used SourceForge (towards the tail end of it's relevence), and I was astonished that anyone would want to call themselves something reminiscent of it

SF was at one point THE place to go to get free software. Just because SF towards the tail end (not coincidentally) became undesirable doesn't mean "forge" as a word is somewhat permanently tainted. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Forges

Posted Sep 8, 2021 0:53 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Just because SF towards the tail end (not coincidentally) became undesirable doesn't mean "forge" as a word is somewhat permanently tainted.

That would be indeed a weird way to think, I hope they meant something else.

Moreover SourceForge was forked into GForge, TeamForge, FusionForge and maybe other forges (and Savannah), so it has not been specific to SF for a long time.

Emacs discusses web-based development workflows

Posted Sep 3, 2021 6:40 UTC (Fri) by ddevault (subscriber, #99589) [Link]

Forge is the generally accepted industry term. Your use here is correct.