21 Mar 2014
How I remember the names of things
Me: “Remembering the names of things is the worst! Like, I can never remember which one is the trainwreck rule.”
Dave: “That’s the Law of Demeter.”
Me: “Right, I also can never remember which one the Law of Demeter is, so that makes sense. But I know and understand the actual principle!”
Dave: “Think of the dots as grains of wheat, and Demeter is the goddess of the harvest! Or think of the e’s in ‘Demeter’ as the dots in the trainwreck?”
Me: “Nah, but I can think of the e’s as regex dots and visualize the trainwreck as /D.m.t.r/! Though to be fair, that would also match Damatar, Dumutur, Dimitir…”
Dave: “Ooh, that works perfectly - with ancient Egyptian, when we don’t know what a vowel sound really was, ‘e’ is actually used as the default vowel!”
