Misbrands (opens in new tab)

Second day of my first ever internship, I dented the aluminium lid of my brand new, very expensive, work Macbook.

So I had an idea - I slapped a band-aid on the dent to hide it. Caught the attention of way too many people. Everytime they inquired, I'd tell them it's because I hurt the laptop by denting it. Resulted in amused and confused faces alike.

This would be a fun game. Take some heavier stickered entries from DevLids.com, Photoshop some of those misbrands-stickers, and let people guess the "fake" ones.

I had a sticker on my work laptop at my old company with the company logo edited to say "ecstasy" and no-one ever commented on it

Yeah I think the JavaScript one is the only one ham-fisted enough to get spotted without explaining the joke.

Thank you for your public service. For some reason Github shows only half of the images on my mobile.

I create a few more and list them on opensea for sale :)

https://opensea.io/collection/sillycon-valley

I kinda like that these misbrands are all done in the style of a competing technology, or a misconception that would kinda bother people (like vim / vscode, rust / go, or angular / react).

I'm sure somebody has a project to link Rust from Go, and are thrilled to have this as their project logo!

It's called "gorris".

Edit: there's also the inverse, called "fepher".

this thing just stares in my soul

it's like a go's gopher but smaller and more dangerous

It's a gopherris inepta, clearly.

There should be a Doom version with that thing.

When I saw that sticker, I immediately wanted to give it to this SEO consultant I worked with several years ago. We had a Python + Angular stack so among our first conversations went like:

Him: Okay your biggest problem right now is that your website is written in Java.

Me: Uhh...no...we use Python. Why is our choice of backend language a problem? (I honestly thought this involves a development in Google v. Oracle that I didn't know about.)

Him: No, no. It's all in Java. Look...(he uses a tool that shows us what Googlebot sees).

Me: Ah...Javascript.

Him: Yes, Java.

I instantly recognized the situation I was in so I didn't opt for pedantry. I adjusted accordingly but I kept using Javascript on my side of the conversation. I dunno if he ever caught on to that or if someone ever corrected him but this has been some kind of inside joke in my engineering team at the time.

I'm hoping if he has this on his laptop lid, it would serve as a "hobo sign" for future software engineers he might have to meet with. (Not to be mean on Christmas! He gave us competent advice, this issue aside.)

It was done on purpose, and early on JVM was shipped with Netscape Navigator. The rebranding of LiveScript (iirc) to JavaScript was done to connect to the Java hype of the time.

> To be honest they should have picked a different name for JavaScript since it has nothing to do with Java.

It was marketing very much in cooperation with Sun.

That's why JS has a C-style syntax: Netscape simultaneously looked at embedding Java and hired Eich to embed Scheme, which then morphed into a bespoke language with Java-inspired syntax but semantics closer to Scheme's.

Small part of history of JavaScript:

>In 1995, after 10 days of work, Brendan Eich created a scripting language for browsers. He called it Mocha. The language was renamed several times over the course of just a couple of months, and was eventually given the name we know today, JavaScript. Brendan originally wanted to add support for the Schema programming language to the Netscape browser, but his superiors wanted the language available in their browser to be more like the then popular Java [1].

[1] Freely based on a description from book and wikipedia:

C. Saternos, Client­Server Web Apps with JavaScript and Java. O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript

JS is an accident of history, which nobody expected would catch on at this scale.

Because I have a free unblemished sticker and an unavoidable desire to reduce entropy in the universe. Gotta stick something.

For me it's positive memories. Every time I pull my laptop out I'm greeted with a mash of events I've been proud to have been involved in and technologies I've done good things with - it's good motivation to continue to do good things. Same goes for every place I've glued the case back together (and frankly a lot of the scars on my body). It all reminds me of a story so why not collect the good ones.

I don't like them either but having one is definitely better than displaying the manufacturer logo. Far less obnoxious than advertising a product you had to pay for. I also never buy clothes with printed brand names and remove every single logo I can off my car.

If everybody at work has the exact same laptop model, it allows distinguishing between laptops.

> just like a phone cover does.

If the designers of the phone want to provide a reasonably priced cover that will hold my credit cards and protect the screen then perhaps they can make one that complements the device; and perhaps I'll buy it. Until then I'll have to make do with what the third party suppliers can deliver, there is no way I'm going to carry my mobile without having it in a case.

The same argument can be made for tattoos. Why ruin the design of perfectly good skin? And not so long ago, it was the common opinion.

Stickers are a way of expression. Sometimes, I don't like the idea being expressed, sometimes I do. Clean is fine too.

Phone covers are usually for protection. And a reason I hate phones with a glass back (thankfully a dying trend). It is fragile, slippery, heavy and not structural, it only looks good in a store because people put on a case afterwards. Pre Galaxy S6, Samsung had the perfect back cover, made of light plastic, openable and replaceable, and in the case of the S5, waterproof. You may find it ugly, but under a protective case, you don't see it. In fact, they even sold cases that replaced the back cover.

I've certainly used it as a conversation starter, just like wearing a band tee. I think there's something interesting to say as well about putting cheap stickers on a a super expensive laptop as a “see if I care” vibe like slapping a bumper sticker on a Lamborghini.

I wonder how many log4j stickers are out there?

It's a way to express your opinion. Quite a lot of stuff on devlids.com is political. Like a bumper sticker or a t shirt. Althoug it probably is a "everybody posts, nobody reads" situation.

The company I work for handed out stickers when I joined and I put my company logo sticker on the work laptop so that I don't confuse it with my personal one.

It’s a personal taste thing, like any other fashion. I prefer things clean on my laptop, but can see why people find it appealing.

What's worse is the stickers will fade after a while and then just look bad. I used to put stickers on my laptops, but I stopped doing it a few years ago. I especially don't want to put a random company logo/brand on my laptop (as opposed to a library or programming language, which I'd be a little happier with, at least)

I never use stickers from commercial projects or just because something is trendy.

I have stickers from community projects that I actively contribute to or projects that are really meaningful to me and I support morally and financially.

In limited amount and size not to be tacky...

Many people apply the same logic to tattoos.

The stickers don't have to be software related. My current ones are not.

I put one on my work laptop to distinguish it from other colleague's laptops. Zero stickers on my personal laptop though.

No need for plastidip, and no need to apply directly to the laptop.

I got these transparent covers for my Mac: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0009/5354/8852/products/cm...

Then I made a custom vinyl skin from DecalGirl that was applied to the top transparent cover : https://www.decalgirl.com/skins/laptops/apple

Problem solved. Now I have a laptop "wrap" that isn't permanently or semi-permanently attached to the machine.

DecalGirl has a bunch of other laptop skins as well for Dell, HP, Acer etc: https://www.decalgirl.com/skins/laptops

> You know those fancy vinyl car wraps? I keep expecting someone to do that for laptops.

I had one of those in like 2006. There was a website where I gave my laptop model, uploaded the image I wanted, and they mailed me a perfectly sized sticker that covered my entire laptop back.

I made one real one, and a "Three Wolf Moon" one for fun.

> Not big on product stickers. Because "No Logo".

I personally use generic stickers from random sticker packs, since I also don't like the product or political stuff (well, work laptop can have employers product if there's nice stickers for that). E.g. the laptop I'm typing this on has a small bird sticker in one corner.

> You know those fancy vinyl car wraps? I keep expecting someone to do that for laptops.

"Laptop skins" is the keyword for that.

>You know those fancy vinyl car wraps? I keep expecting someone to do that for laptops.

Sounds like something dbrand[1] does.

[1]https://dbrand.com/shop/dell-xps-13-skins-9380

dbrand sells vinyl "skins" for laptops and phones

Ever though about printing your initials in a sticker?

ferris.svg - The rust mascot crab (called "ferris") with the face and color of Gopher (the golang mascot)

github.svg - GitHub in a Gitlab styled logo

javascript.svg - JavaScript written in a Java-styled font + the Java logo (Sun/Oracle)

pip.svg - Pip (the python package manager) styled in the npm logo style (node.js package manager)

rails.svg - Ruby on Rails with pretty much the rails logo, but in the color of WordPress. Also the "RubyOn Rails" text theming is in the style of the WordPress logo typography

react.svg - ReactJS in a the Angular logo, including the font style

rust.svg - (this one was truly painful, personally :P) "Rust" (the language) displayed in the node.js logo font styling, including colors

ubuntu.svg - "Ubunutu" styled in the debian (linux distribution) font styling, along with the debian logo. This one specifically, is where the hybrid feels the most accurate since Ubuntu is a debian-based linux distro, but I do believe the communities don't get along very well (or at least that's the running joke)

vscode.svg - VS Code (Visual Studio Code, the IDE/Text Editor) displayed in the "Vim" logo font styling and the logo with the stylized "V"

Reminds me of this joke: https://twitter.com/tpope/status/1172743697315835904

Redbubble! I believe they do one-off t-shirts

Laptop lids are common for developers, especially in trendier companies.

Corporate power point presentations is the target audience.

On servers, directly on the Hard-disk-cage-release....so you can be sure they are even more hated.

on your snowboard

Laptop lid

The idea is that the image is from their counterparts: Debian and Vim.