in reply to Re: Etymology of Foo, RFC 3092
in thread Etymology of Foo, RFC 3092

Well fred and barney are two of the main characters from a popular kid's show The Flintstones. (And they were used in Learning Perl along with the rest of the cast.)

Perhaps, being French, you can give us more insight on why toto is a commonly used variable name there?

As for wombat, tutu, and titi, they are real things with a bit of the air of the ridiculous about them.

I have no clue about the others.

  • Comment on Re (tilly) 2: Etymology of Foo, RFC 3092

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Re: Re (tilly) 2: Etymology of Foo, RFC 3092
by arhuman (Vicar) on Apr 09, 2001 at 16:11 UTC
    I could indeed give some explanations but I fear they won't be as exhaustive as in the RFC 3092.

    A LOT of french coders use toto (and its phonetic derivatives tata,tutu,titi).

    'toto' has always been used as common name, in school
    ('toto is riding a bicyle a 10 mph, how long will it take to makes 25 miles ?')
    or in common life where it's used in joke and examples.

    It's part of our culture, just as I suppose you (english/american ?) use 'joe'.

    The laziness factor is also inportant as 'toto' is even faster to type than 'azerty'(our 'qwerty') or '1234'.

    "Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)
Re: Re (tilly) 2: Etymology of Foo, RFC 3092
by TheoPetersen (Priest) on Apr 09, 2001 at 17:04 UTC
    wombat is variously attributed as an acronym for "Waste Of Money, Brains And Time."

    As a Datatrieve survivor, I've also used wombat now and then as a name for any kind of data collection.