Spoke to this really interesting guy today who was telling me all about his Agile experience and where and why he has implemented technologies in certain projects.
It was one of those really good conversations that could have gone on forever. He posed a question that was hard to answer…….
Where do the names of these Agile products originate from, ie Selenium, Fitnesse, Badboy, Crystal, Scrum………………..Who decides?
It’s like naming a baby, isn’t it?
I mean, if you’ve created a new software tool, you can let your imagination run wild, can’t you?
If you had the chance, wouldn’t you want to come up with a name that intrigues and bemuses?
Most of them sound like cereal or juices I’ve noticed. But in a sea of names it can be hard to come up with a new name when, much like trying to secure a new URL these days, all the good names have already been taken.
I find it interesting that two of the most popular technologies in the enterprize Java space these days have names that wouldn’t normally mix in nature:
Spring and Hibernate
Now, if we could just get some technologies called “chalk” and “cheese”…
Well – Selenium came about as the name for this wonderful web testing app by looking at the name of the closest commercial competitor.
The current commercial competitor is called “Mercury Quality Centre” (and has always included Mercury in it’s name). Selenium (the chemical) is used as the antidote to mercury poisoning.
So the open source Selenium is the “antidote” to the commercially available “Mercury Quality Centre”.
I can’t help on the others 🙂