The Linnaeus Awards

I'm starting a new category here: the Linnaeus Awards. Candidates must be examplars of Linnaean Taxonomy:

The method, the soul of science, designates at first sight any body in nature in such a way that the body in question expresses the name that is proper to it, and that this name recalls all the knowledge that may, in the course of time, have been acquired about the body thus named: so that in the midst of extreme confusion there is revealed the sovereign order of nature.

So, if you encounter a trout in the wild, you don't call it a "trout". You call it an "Oncorhynchus (mykiss) aguabonita masculinus trescenti-septi-squamatic duodecim-annus-natis...", stuffing every conceivable attribute of the object into its name.

Categories

1. Longest Name. Names which are mashed together because of formalLanguageIdentifierRestrictions or natürlichsprachemodifizierdiarrhöe might get bonus points.
2. Most Dimensions. Names which incorporate knowledge from varied axes, the more the better.
3. Most Abstract. Placing the number-of-scales-on-a-fish into its name is fun, but for real "sovereign order" you need to incorporate the vocabulary of the taxonomy itself into the name. For example, a function in a spreadsheet program named, "SpreadsheetProgramAdditionFunction". Bonus points for including terms from ontology, taximetrics, or metaphysics.

Feel free to nominate additional candidates here or email: linnaeus@aminus.org.

Today's nomination:

RequestProcessorFactoryFactory

From org.apache.xmlrpc.server

Factory-factories are not new. But this one goes a step further with some of its "implementing classes":

• RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.RequestSpecificProcessorFactoryFactory
• RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.StatelessProcessorFactoryFactory

...and genuflective attributes like:

• RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.RequestProcessorFactory.getRequestProcessor(XmlRpcRequest)

But it doesn't stop there; the copy nominates itself:

There is nothing magic about the request processor: It may very well be a POJO. The RequestProcessorFactoryFactory is passed to the AbstractReflectiveHandlerMapping at startup...

Passing a factory-factory to an abstract-anything makes this a good candidate. Using the phrase "nothing magic" with a straight face catapults it to the top.