But why "detreville"?

(But why not?)

“There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation and naming things.”
—Phil Karlton

I picked my Substack username as detreville because I always pick detreville when I can. Sometimes I have to use an email address, but some websites still allow arbitrary usernames (for their own reasons, at which I can only guess, but I take advantage of whatever asymmetries I can).

I’m the only “DeTreville” I know working in Computer Science; it’s an unusual family name. Heck, at one point, I figure, I was the only DeTreville in the world who programmed computers or used them for fun stuff—or almost knocked over a very important old computer at a reception at the Computer History Museum—and so I’ve always thought I should stake my claim to the name online. There’d be no conflict since I wouldn’t have to worry about the name already being taken—and, so far, that’s been mostly the case. (The distant past was a magical time.) Once or twice I’ve generously let another DeTreville have detreville, but I’ve been quite stingy on average. The number of other DeTrevilles online (or deTrevilles or de Trevilles or de Trévilles or des Troisvilles or whatever) has increased greatly from the days before the spread of the Internet, but I was here first. Get off my lawn, you darn kids!

I usually spell these usernames of mine detreville instead of DeTreville. My name is hard for many people to spell or even to read, as I’ve learned from years of coaxing them through it, but lower-casing it to detreville might make things a little easier for everyone. It might also emphasize—perhaps only to me—that it’s a username, not a person’s name, since it’s all lower-case. Okay fine.

(On a side note, my middle name is “evil.” No, actually, that’s the middle of my last name. I also have a Ph.D. in Computer Science, but I’m guessing some username like dr.evil is a lot more likely already to be taken than detreville. My favorite login name used to be jdd; I was once jdd@src.dec.com, which was a very satisfying quadruple of triple letters, but those good old days are gone. Too bad; so sad.)

So, my username here on Substack is detreville. My first pick at a name for this blog was some random placeholder like John’s Wonderful Blog on Many Topics of Universal Interest, but I couldn’t come up with anything better that was both descriptive and attractive to potential new readers. Maybe detreville will seem mysterious at first, making readers want to learn more (or maybe not), and it should be easier to remember afterwards than John’s Wonderful Blog on Many Topics of Universal Interest (or not).

Finally, this blog is my only Substack publication, so calling it detreville too should give us all one less thing to remember.

So. (Pro Tip for writers: a solitary “So” is a great way to indicate you're ending one chain of thought and heading somewhere else.) If you see detreville online, that’s me or mine. (Maybe that should be detreville™ or detreville® instead; maybe it will be next time. And do not create your own detreville names now just because you can; that would confuse the Internet. And now that I’ve explained all the names here (detreville and detreville, respectively), you should subscribe to detreville.substack.com, and read on and on, and tell all your many friends to do the same. As a special prize, I’ll offer my one-millionth subscriber $100US. (Terms and conditions may apply, which means “or maybe not.”)