The name has unfortunate verbal similarities with a well known sex toy, especially when different accents are considered. I am actually astounded they went ahead with this name.
I'm going to venture a guess and say it's more likely that people will associate this with millions upon millions of flashlights that have been sold in the United States, rather than whatever it is you're talking about.
Really? In North American english, a flashlight is a handheld light, there is no thought of the toy you're referring to when it is mentioned. That "light" got its name as a play on flashlight. It's funny to see that now become the primary connotation in some peoples minds.
> In North American english, a flashlight is a handheld light, there is no thought of the toy you're referring to when it is mentioned.
Sample size of 1, but this North American immediately thought "oh no, how unfortunate" on seeing the headline. (Admittedly, I do listen to more podcasts than the average person.)
you do realize that the recently introduced sex toy was both named and designed to resemble flashlights, right?
that said, interesting decision to ditch the scripting language. when i think of these sorts of things, immediately think that embedding or supporting a scripting language makes a ton of sense. i'm curious what the thinking was to just go full c++? i suppose they just decided that modern c++ was easy enough and this was better for simplifying production?
Reviving my old throwaway account to confirm that I indeed thought of "fleshlight" immediately after reading the announcement. Keep in mind that the average coder is far more likely to read Reddit daily (where this reference comes up surprisingly often) than to do things that require a flashlight (own a house somewhere remote, etc)
as a non-native english speaker I'll humbly admit that fleshlight was indeed the first word that popped into my mind when reading the title, because I never say flashlight but lampe-torche (while a "fleshlight" is an occasional fun present / recurrent meme for friends birthday or stuff like that)
As a non native english speaker I knew the word flashlight years before I knew that you could use torch to mean the same thing (and not just a burning stick). Websters even seems to claim that this is mostly a British thing.
Well this observation has produced a furious negative reaction, which I suspect is of both puritanical and chauvinist origin.
Perhaps because I can't see very well I had uncertainty when reading the article title. But unless you're quite innocent (i.e. not a user of the internet) I don't see how you could avoid knowing about such devices. Knowing many programmers, I also know that they span the full spectrum from Bible-studies to BDSM (though that might be a horseshoe), and many are prone to juvenile humour which can become sexually toned. So I know that someone will use it in this context. When you become a manager you choose to avoid creating such problems. Some of you probably see this tone policing -- you are correct, suck it up.
