I decided to look up the difference between tortoise and turtles, and apparently the former are land critters. Plus have elephant style hind feet to support their high load/ weight among the larger species due to being land focused. 
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/12/shell-game--how-to-tell-a-turtle-from-a-tortoise/


So there’s a cute stable under load angle there ;) at least for a tortoise / land turtle angle 

On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 12:08 PM John Cotton Ericson <John.Ericson@obsidian.systems> wrote:










Yeah I think the old "functional programming is slow" memes died

off about when the rest of the industry went on its JavaScript

bender, so I am not really worried about the negative connotations

of turtles.



The positive connotations of turtles sounds very good to me.

Besides safety,





  •  the longevity of at least giant tortoises also speaks to

    GHC's rare ability to stay at the vanguard of research while

    still being wildly used.


  • Their ability to walk and swim speaks to the diverse backends

    that can be attached to GHC (NCG, LLVM, GHCJS, Asterius,

    Clash's, etc.).


  • Even the fable, from which the slowness myth comes from I

    guess, goes well with "avoid success at all costs".




Conversely I am not a fan of choosing a Cat. I like Cats fine in

real life, don't get be wrong, but Cats are so popular on the

internet that this would be the the unmarked animal choice, with

no clear connotations or memorability. I think that would be the

juvenile choice, per Ben's slippery slope.




Foxes are nice, but I think Firefox has that for life.



Octopuses are alright. GitHub's Octocat doesn't doesn't pose

nearly as much of a problem as Firefox for foxes. Still, while

Octopuses are smart, they are usually solitary and mischievous.

GHC is very much a long-term group effort, belying the solitary

connotation, and I certainly hope any compiler I use isn't

mischievous!




A turtle for a compiler is a bold choice that indicates our

values, confidence that the performance of compiled code is immune

to cheap derision, and humor.



John



P.S. The funny patterns on turtles' backs could be made of

lambdas?...



P.P.S. and yes, if it does compel us to fix rampant list

appending just so we're fast on all fronts, that would be nice too

:).



On 9/2/20 11:47 AM, Ben Gamari wrote:






Richard Eisenberg <rae@richarde.dev> writes:







I'm oddly drawn to the idea of a turtle -- except that turtles are

slow. But animals are cute. Maybe something involving a fox, given

that foxes can be clever? Octopuses are also known to be very clever,

but maybe GitHub has octopuses covered.







In general I'm rather neutral on the logo question. There is a fine line

between "juvenile" (which may detract from the project's credibility in

the eyes of some) and "cute" (which I think is universally a Good

Thing); the current rather boring logo was a quick attempt to satisfy

the need for some logo while recognizing that I lack the artistic

ability to walk that line. I don't think it's a bad logo but it's quite

dull and far from being a *good* logo. I do hope someone steps up to do

better.



Logos aside, I do feel the need to correct the record here: you

clearly have not seen how quickly a turtle can move when offered banana

or shrimp. They can be quite quick when suitably incentivized!



Cheers,



- Ben








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