On Naming Things

"New York, New York. So good they named it twice." - Gerard Kenny 

Naming things is hard.

That being said, I haven't found any area that has struggled with naming things as much as Java Garbage Collection...

For instance, even official Oracle documentation uses the term "infant mortality" to describe objects that "die" in the Young generation. While I get the metaphor (joke?), it's not really appropriate to talk about the infant mortality rate associated with your application when you're working in the Health domain. Saying things like "...the minor collection can take advantage of the high infant mortality rate." doesn't endear you to your coworkers.

There's also a lot of inconsistency and repurposing of terms.

The terms "Young Generation" and "New Generation" are often used interchangeably (even within the same documents)...

"The NewSize and MaxNewSize parameters control the new generation’s minimum and maximum size. Regulate the new generation size by setting these parameters equal. The bigger the younger generation, the less often minor collections occur. The size of the young generation relative to the old generation is controlled by NewRatio. For example, setting -XX:NewRatio=3 means that the ratio between the old and young generation is 1:3, the combined size of eden and the survivor spaces will be fourth of the heap." - Sun Java System Application Server Enterprise Edition 8.2 Performance Tuning Guide

The same goes for "Old Generation" and "Tenured Generation"... 

Watch out though! The term "Tenured" is also used synonymously with "Promoted" when it comes to objects moving through the generations.

It gets worse when you read people's blogs and see them try to provide their own interpretations of the terminology. I read one today where the guy was trying to say some major collections aren't really major collections in his opinion... It just adds to the confusion.