This habbit of programmers to name things with puns instead of descriptively drives me batty. WiX is bad, but Homebrew is on a whole new level.

Each time I use a mac I have to relearn what a tap represents vs cask vs brew vs celler etc. But hey, aren't they clever with words!

I don't get it either.

Chef does the same; it has chef, knife, kitchen, berks, recipes and more. Getting started with it is a freaking nightmare.

Everything has cute logos and names and good looking README.md files to lure you into using it then you're trapped into hell.

Try Googling for Chef Knife when you're lot logged in as well and it's a total nightmare.

It's hipster programming kitsch. It's unnecessary and indicative of the culture of its developers and early adopters.

There wasn't a problem with MacPorts / Fink, they are built on top of proven mature tech (FreeBSD ports and Debian's apt), but why not reinvent the wheel? All the cool node kids are doing it.

I switched because I had to nuke my entire Macports packages directory and start from scratch to fix one error or another several times a year. Got fed up with it and tried Homebrew ~3 years ago. Haven't had to do anything like that even once, so I've stuck with it.

Homebrew has all the markers of a project I should hate, but it's so rarely inconvenienced me in practice that I can't help but like it.

> I had to nuke my entire Macports packages directory

I'm not sure what you were doing, but this is scary. I've been using it since 2012 or so and never had as much as a hickup.

Perform an update or install a package, things break. Usually Macports itself would partially or entirely stop working. Not the same way every time. After the first couple times I learned that attempts to fix it usually didn't entirely solve the problem and/or took too long, so I just started deleting the whole thing and starting over when things went wrong. At least re-installing packages doesn't require my full attention.

2012 may have been around when I stopped using it, can't recall for sure. Maybe it improved after I dropped it.

Those clever words immediately made sense to me for their inherent meanings the first time I saw them. So they are actually quite useful in their pairings.

I love puns just like everyone else, but when you have a word that precisely describes the thing you have, why not use it instead of using a clever metaphor?

Like programs for Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Photos, Notes...?

Word! The picture you paint, drives a powerful point.

Well isn't that nice for the one person who intuits their meaning, for the rest of us we would like to not have to translate already designated words to new words for no other reason than to be playful.

Homebrew was the first package manager I ever used, and the cutesy names actually helped me understand what each part represented. I feel like I have a better understanding of package management thanks to the naming scheme.

This is why I use MacPorts.

That would be great. I don't find them intuitive at all.