What are these things on the ground?

[ciphergoth]

Well I would never have guessed that last post would be so popular! I have a followup question for you all.

So one of the things our robot can do besides navigate walls is pick up inert things that it finds inside squares, and put them down in other squares. It can carry any number of these things, and it may find any number in a square; they are all the same. There's one near the exit of the maze in the picture in my last post - the "1" with a circle around it. What should these things be called?

In Karel the Robot and all subsequent programs, they're called "beepers", but that's just confusing - that way it sounds like they do something, but they really don't. So what might be a better name? I've considered coins, tokens, chips, stones, pebbles but I'm just not sure, and maybe there's a better name I'm missing. Do you like any of my proposals, or do you have a better one of your own? Thanks!

Comments

[simont]

Widgets, gizmos, doodads, whatsits, oojits, thingys? :-)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I love those terms, but they make it sound like the doodads actually do something...

[simont]

Hmm. And on the other hand, "coins" and other treasure-related metaphors suggest that the aim of them is to pick them up and never let them go, whereas presumably there are plenty of interesting programming challenges involving picking them up and then putting them down somewhere else (perhaps so as to form a pattern, or some such). So perhaps purplerabbits's suggested metaphor of game pieces is the best direction to head in, suggesting that they're things you can pick up and put down in ways that are significant to you but they don't do anything of their own accord?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'm increasingly leaning towards "stones", which is nice and monosyllabic, gets across the inertness like pebbles, but also has a game-playing feel from Go.

[simont]

Oh yes, that's nice. And it's less vague than "pieces", and less prone to accidentally imply functionality than the other game-related idea I was going to suggest, "counters".