Package Pronunciation Best Practices

General
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#1

Not sure if this is the best section for this, so please let me know if it should be moved.

There are a lot of :package:s both in and out of the tidyverse that end with an r: sparklyr, dplyr, stringr. Until recently, I assumed pretty much all of these (with the exception of purrr) were pronounced sort of as one word (sparkler, d-plier, stringer). But at rstudio::conf, I heard (RStudio) people saying things like "sparkly-arr" and "tidy-arr." So my questions are:

  1. Is there a recommendation for how to pronounce such package names?
  2. Is there a list published somewhere that separates the "er" packages from the "-arr" packages?
How do you speak R?
#2

My opinionated opinion is that there shouldn't be a best practice on how to pronounce these invented words. It should be loose and ambiguous, so people are as free as possible to say it however it feels right to them without feeling self conscious or like they missed a memo. But maybe that's just me :slight_smile:

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#3

Pronunciation and spelling of packages is probably one of the most engaging past-times for programmers (aside of participating in holywars about what language/text editor is better).

What really blew my mind is that there are at least two camps of how to pronounce CRAN. I was always under the impression that it is pronounced in one word (like "crane", but without e on the end), but one of the maintainers of CRAN pronounces it as C-RAN because there is CPAN for Perl and it is pronounced (understandably) as C-PAN and CRAN was named in the same tradition.

This is all to say - it doesn't really matter as long as people you are talking to understand what you mean :slight_smile:

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#4

I second this, and I admit I'm not even that much of a programmer.

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#5

After trying to name just one package, I think I can third this! It's hard to name stuff.

#6

Thank you all for the quick responses!

@nirgrahamuk I confess I had not even considered that as an option, but I love it!

@mishabalyasin That is very interesting! I had never thought to pronounce it that way. Isn't there also a CTAN somewhere for LATEX?

I appreciate how welcoming this community is and should've trusted it would choose the most non-exclusive option!

#7

I find it almost physically painful that the ape package wasn't called aper :slight_smile:

#8

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