this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
1191 points (99.6% liked)

Programmer Humor

28365 readers
1054 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah, they missed the best part.

GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix, which is a recursive acronym. And, when pronounced properly (like the animal) the G is silent. The entire Linux ecosystem has words that start with G based on an acronym where G essentially comes from nowhere, and isn't actually pronounced.

[–] rocnat@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Well, I dont wanna start a debate, but the official website of GNU indicate that the "g" in GNU isn't silent.

So it depends on whether you want to pronounce it "properly" or as it was intended.

The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix!”; it is pronounced as one syllable with a hard g, like “grew” but with the letter n instead of r.

https://www.gnu.org/gnu/pronunciation.en.html

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works -3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, I dont wanna start a debate, but the official website of GNU indicate that the "g" in GNU isn't silent.

Yeah, but that's wrong. It's named after the animal, and the animal is pronounced without a G sound. I'm not going to mangle the pronunciation because they screwed up.

[–] anguo@piefed.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago

Depends on where you're from.

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] ZombieSenpai@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago