It is a bit redundant, but that's not the same thing as saying it's bad or author should have eliminated this redundancy. I think of this a bit like a Checksum, which is also a redundancy... it reduces cognitive load/likelihood of error by the reader when parsing this particular acronym. Like ATM can mean both "At the moment" and "Automated Teller Machine", saying "ATM Machine" helps disambiguate (in a way) which acronym you mean. Often context is enough to do this, but as a habit/affordance to users with variable levels of familiarity with the context, I think it's a useful and good redundancy rather than a wasteful one to be eliminated.

Any medium of human communication (text, speech, body language, etc...) is lossy. Humans need acknowledgment, retransmission, and redundancy.

No. This is not RAS. It's a continuation of a long trend in *nix/FLOSS for using recursive acronyms. One of the earliest:

GNU: GNU's Not Unix

The one closest to me (though I didn't invent it): JACK - the JACK Audio Connection kit.

It is. See the difference:

GNU Operating System -> GNU's Not Unix Operating System

Fish Shell -> Friendly Interactive Shell Shell

One expands to include the original acronym, but doesn't duplicate the descriptive extra words. The other doesn't expand to include the original acronym, but does duplicate the descriptive extra word.

In other words, one is recursive but not redundant, the other is redundant but not recursive.

What about bash shell? Bourne Again SHell shell. That's the same thing. But i think it can be a helpful distinction between using bash shell as an interactive shell and using the bash scripting language.

Yup. I'm one of those folks who thinks that RAS syndrome is an entertaining and occasionally useful language quirk, and not at all a problem.

For example, even within a computing context, saying "Fish shell" just might help someone understand that you're talking about the Unix shell and not the cipher, and would always help someone who's not familiar with Fish to at least understand that you're talking about an alternative Unix shell.

By contrast, whenever someone posts a Hacker News article about ML, the first comment is invariably someone complaining that they thought it would be about machine learning, and this is unnecessarily confusing, and a borderline injustice, it should change its name, etc. It would probably be easier for everyone involved if it were idiomatic to say "ML language", even thought doing so would be redundant.

But ML preceded ML (at least as a somewhat widespread topic of discussion), so it's the machine learning fans who get to come up with alternative terminology.

I could not agree more, I'm sure zsh can do everything fish can and a lot more, but getting it to that stage would take me more time than I'll spend interacting with fish for the next few months

I’m not sure if I would click on a HN link that said just “Fish”. But Fish is great.

I disagree that it's actually redundant. It's like if back in 2004 somebody said "Apple computers are overpriced and underpowered." Technically, "Apple" in that sentence stands for "Apple Computer," so you're saying "Apple Computer computers are overpriced and underpowered." But that's fine, because it's just part of the company's name, not actually a redundancy. No copy editor would have flagged that, but they would have flagged attempts to remove the redundancy by saying things like "Apples" or "Apple Computers." Similarly, Fish is a name, so adding "shell" is useful in identifying the thing you're naming.

They could have written "Fish the shell" to disambiguate from "fish the animal" and nobody would have complained. But they left out "the", and now it's redundant?

Isn't it funny how the mind works?

> Nit: Fish Shell is a bit redundant, as Fish stands for "Friendly Interactive Shell".

Isn't this a common trope with software e.g. "WINE is not an emulator" or people saying "ATM Machine".

It is, and "RAS syndrome" (redundant acronym syndrome syndrome) should be encouraged, not avoided.

"PIN number" is easier and faster to understand. Probably better understood than "PI number" or the expanded form. And in this case, a link just named "fish" would have been fairly ambiguous.

RAM memory

DVD disc

LCD display

We like our nouns to be general, and rather turn the acronym into an adjective. It makes good sense too: PROM memory, BluRay disc, OLED display show their connections

Your first example is a recursive acronym (actually a backronym in this case), and is deliberate. That's the trope. Redundancy is usually just incorrect but common use of natural language.

Edit: I'm wrong about WINE being a backronym, but it is a recursive acronym.

> Redundancy is usually just incorrect

How is it incorrect?

Perhaps a weaker way of putting it is that it is colloquial, but not proper form.

> not proper form

Which is annoying to those who value form more than function.

Sure. I don't have an opinion one way or another and almost certainly "misuse" acronyms.

a good friend of mine used to say NIC Card Card