Years ago, I wrote a tool to automate creating user accounts for a system. In a time before automated account creation was standard, this system needed to auto-generate passwords. I designed a utility that used random words pulled from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland texts to derive passwords. As noted by those who used it, the script occasionally created some absolutely hilarious results.
When I started this venture, I needed a rich source of project names, so I decided to hark back to those days of using words from Lewis Carroll’s stories to define my projects.
Internal tools quickly started to emerge: Dinah, Mimsy, and Wabe. When it came time to think of a name for the company itself, Wabe, which was the name of our central components project, started to feel like the perfect fit.
In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice that the word “wabe” refers to the grass-plot surrounding a sundial. It is called a wabe because it goes a long way before it, a long way behind it, and a long way on each side of it.
For us, the wabe represents the perfect architectural metaphor.
When managing modern artificial intelligence and complex software systems, the hardest challenge is managing the boundaries of your systems. We map out the clear space surrounding our projects. We define exactly what lies before them, what lies behind them, and what lies on each side of them.
As a tribute to that original inspiration, the following is Jabberwocky, the famous poem from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.By Lewis Carroll
