It's also a single letter in the alphabet. Anyone who names their project a single letter (or two) is expecting some amount of collision. The real question is whether or not the collision is worth it.
In this case, it might be... they are trying to make a command-line tool. So in theory, you'll be typing the command often, meaning that a short name is preferable.
But honestly, it would have probably been a better idea to use a more descriptive name.
Hi, i'm q's creator (HN made the name q uppercase, but it's actually a lowercase q). The reasoning was that it's used as a command line tool, and used often. So "q" and not "Q" :)I'm currently preparing the debian package, and one-letter names are not allowed, so it's going to be named "qsql" there.
Given that the command argument is in full SQL notation, which must be passed quoted, saving three or four characters on the executable name doesn't really seem worth it. The shortest example they give, a SELECT/GROUP query, is over 50 characters.
In this case, it might be... they are trying to make a command-line tool. So in theory, you'll be typing the command often, meaning that a short name is preferable.
But honestly, it would have probably been a better idea to use a more descriptive name.