Here's the problem with using words like "bro" (however jokingly): the problem is not with what you[0] are thinking when you read the word "bro", but with what other people, especially newcomers, are thinking. The locker-room atmosphere that stuff like this creates is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people, women especially, who infer that on top of all the technically difficult stuff that everyone has to learn to be CS types, they'll also have to deal with a constant barrage of "you're not our kind" flung at them by the in-group. You personally may not be intending that as your message, but I assure you that your personal intent does not matter when you are using language that has been associated with exclusion and discrimination.[1]
The problem here, if this program is actually intended to be used, is that just typing in the command would be a constant reminder of an entire subculture that is widely seen as[2] putting up walls and doors that say "NO GIЯLS ALOUD" around the programming profession, an attempt to preserve privilege. Those of you suggesting an alias are either being disingenuous or missing the point entirely.
[0] Meaning individuals, of whatever gender/race/class/whatever, that are likely to be reading HN.
[1] If you don't believe me, ponder for a moment sentences like, "But I like Negroes just fine!" Language matters.
[2] Again, you might not mean to reference that when you use words like "brogrammer". But it's how an awful lot of us read it.
EDIT: Rereading other posts on this page, I should add that I almost certainly got the phrase "shame about the name" stuck in my head from reading dewitt's post. Four words, such a concise summary of my attitude! :)
EDIT 2: "they'll have" -> "that everyone has" to clarify argument. Thx vezzy-fnord.
I'm going to email the LKML immediately and petition that 'fsck' needs to be renamed to 'love', because I don't 'fsck', I make 'love' and I don't appreciate the negative stereotype that it implies I am some sort of inhuman non-lovemaking monster whilst going about my daily sysadmin tasks.
To most people english is a foreign language which makes it improbable they would get a play on english slang words.
'bro' is not even loosely related to man: man is a pager interface for system documentation, it is standard, has existed for decades and comes with pretty much every *nixes and is related to the info command. The content man displays is written by knowledgeable people (developers, maintainers, etc.) and is split in several sections: 1 Executable programs or shell commands 2 System calls (functions provided by the kernel) 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries) 4 Special files (usually found in /dev) 5 File formats and conventions eg /etc/passwd 6 Games 7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g. man(7), groff(7) 8 System administration commands (usually only for root) 9 Kernel routines [Non standard]
On the other hand, bro is a brand new non standard ruby utility as an interface to a database of user provided one liner command examples ranked through a voting system that could probably be easily gamed. Its content right now is uncategorized and of dubious quality with some command not being working examples, some missing explanation to even being outright malicious.
Those two very different tools are hardly related in any way.
Lastly, fsck stands for file system check, its name is suited to its use and follows a tradition of clever naming which answer the need to be concise, indicative of its use and somewhat intuitive.
see cp for copy, mv for move, mkdir for make directory, cat for concatenate, chown for change ownership, du for disk usage, df for disk free, ls to list files, rm to remove files, rmdir to remove directories, sed for stream editor and so on.
Asking for a rename of fsck to love is just the perfect example against the point you're trying to make, that what you say is relevant to this discussion.