Warning, this entry is filed under "rant."
PuTTY is a wonderful terminal emulator. I use the Windows version all the time for launching ssh sessions. I also use it for serial console connectivity, telnet (if I have to), and testing raw remote tcp sockets.
Sometimes I hear people, particularly Windows admins, refer to "puttying in" to a system running ssh services. Sorry, no, "putty" is not a verb. Let's look at the wonderfully flexible English language a bit...
We convert nouns to verbs all the time. We even convert companies or products into verbs sometimes. For example, when I lived in India, people never referred to "making copies," they always referred to "Xeroxing." But in IT, we convert protocols, not company or product names, into verbs. Here are some examples:
PuTTY is a wonderful terminal emulator. I use the Windows version all the time for launching ssh sessions. I also use it for serial console connectivity, telnet (if I have to), and testing raw remote tcp sockets.
Sometimes I hear people, particularly Windows admins, refer to "puttying in" to a system running ssh services. Sorry, no, "putty" is not a verb. Let's look at the wonderfully flexible English language a bit...
We convert nouns to verbs all the time. We even convert companies or products into verbs sometimes. For example, when I lived in India, people never referred to "making copies," they always referred to "Xeroxing." But in IT, we convert protocols, not company or product names, into verbs. Here are some examples:
- Telnet: "I telnet'ed into that router but couldn't find anything wrong with the configuration."
- rdp: "Just rdp [or remote] to that server and restart the Splunk agent."
- ftp: "You just have to ftp into that server to see that the file is over 500 megs."
- ssh: "I ssh'd [pronounced ess-ess-ayched] into that server to see what was spiking the CPU."
Not this: "I puttyed (puttied?) into that server to demonstrate that I don't know the difference between a program that uses a protocol and a protocol itself."
Sometimes just a "verbicized" noun isn't good enough... it doesn't stand alone well as a verb. Some examples:
- smtp:
- Bad: "SMTP into the server to see if it's an open relay."
- Good: "Open an SMTP session to that mail server and see if it's an open relay."
- snmp:
- Bad: "SNMP to that host to see its uptime." (we could get into a debate over connection-oriented [tcp] versus connectionless [udp] on this one)
- Good: "Run an SNMP query against that host to see its uptime."
- cifs:
- Bad: "cifs into that Windows server from Linux using smbclient."
- Good: "Initiate a cifs transfer to a Windows share from Linux via smbclient."
- Citrix:
- Bad: "Citrix into that server."
- Good: "Establish a Citrix/ICA/XenApp session to see if the firewall rules are correct."
- etc., etc.
So let's just remember: never turn a piece of software into a verb. Protocols, fine, but unless a particular program is the only thing that can use a protocol (which is never true for very long), let's make the protocol the verb. That means there is no "puttying into"--only "ssh'ing into."
/End rant.
