by Joche Ojeda | Sep 25, 2025 | Dev Memes, Uncategorized
If you hang out around developers long enough, you’ll notice we don’t just use tools — we nickname them, mispronounce them, and sometimes turn them into full-blown mascots. Here are three favorites: WSL, SQL, and GitHub Copilot’s Spec Kit.
WSL → “Weasel”
English reality: WSL stands for Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Nickname: Said quickly as “double-u S L,” it echoes weasel, so the meme stuck.
Spanish (El Salvador / Latin America): In El Salvador and many Latin American countries, the letter W is read as “doble be” (not doble u). So WSL is pronounced “doble be, ese, ele.”
SQL → “Sequel”
English reality: SQL stands for Structured Query Language.
Pronunciation: Both “S-Q-L” and “sequel” are used in English.
Spanish (LatAm): Most developers say it letter by letter: “ese cu e ele.” Bilingual teams sometimes mix in “sequel.”
Spec Kit → “Speckified” (Spooky Spell)
English reality: GitHub Copilot’s Spec Kit helps scaffold code from specs.
Community fun: Projects get “speckified,” a word that mischievously echoes “spookified.” Our playful mascot idea is a wizard enchanting a codebase: You have been Speckified!
Spanish (LatAm): Phonetically, SPEC is “ese, pe, e, ce.” In casual talk many devs just say “espec” (es-pek) to keep the pun alive.
Quick Reference (Latin American / El Salvador Spanish)
| Acronym |
English Pronunciation |
Spanish (LatAm / El Salvador) Phonetics |
Nickname / Mascot |
| WSL |
“double-u S L” (sounds like weasel) |
“doble be, ese, ele” |
Weasel |
| SQL |
“S-Q-L” or “sequel” |
“ese cu e ele” |
Sequel Robot |
| SPEC |
“spec” → “speckified” |
“ese, pe, e, ce” (or “espec”) |
Spec Wizard (spell) |
Why This Matters
These playful twists — weasel, sequel robot, speckified wizard — show how dev culture works:
- Acronyms turn into characters.
- English vs. Spanish pronunciations add layers of humor.
- Memes make otherwise dry tools easier to talk about.
Next time someone says their project is fully speckified on WSL with SQL, you might be hearing about a weasel, a robot, and a wizard casting spooky spec spells.
Related Links
VS Code – Let it Cook – Introducing Spec Kit for Spec-Driven Development! – Episode 13
by Joche Ojeda | Sep 24, 2025 | Github Spec Kit, Vibe Code, Vibe document
I thought vibe coding was chaotic at home. Try doing it while traveling halfway across the world.
Between layovers, hotel lobbies, and unpredictable Wi-Fi, I convinced myself I could keep momentum by letting AI carry the weight. Just toss it some prompts, let it generate code, and keep vibing in transit. Sounds good, right?
It wasn’t. Instead of progress, I found myself trapped in the same entropy loop as before—except now with added airport noise and bad coffee. It finally hit me: coding wasn’t the hard part anymore. The real challenge was lowering the chaos of my ideas into clear, executable requirements.
The Travel Chaos of Vibe Coding
While bouncing from Saint Petersburg to El Salvador, I leaned on vibe coding like a crutch. I threw half-formed prompts at the AI:
- “Build me a service that works offline.”
- “Hook this into a booking flow.”
- “Make it sync when online again.”
And, of course, the AI delivered: endless snippets, scaffolds, and fragments. But none of it fit together. It was like watching a band jam without ever agreeing on the key. Six hours in, all I had was a disjointed mess—again.
Enter GitHub Spec Kit and New Perspectives
Somewhere between flights, I stumbled on GitHub Spec Kit, thanks to a Visual Studio Code podcast episode: Let it Cook – Introducing Spec Kit for Spec-Driven Development! (Episode 13).
Not long after, I tuned into the Merge Conflict podcast: All in on Spec-Driven Development (Episode 479), where James Montemagno and Frank Kruger broke down what spec-driven workflows really mean for developers.
Spec Kit showed me a different angle: instead of treating the AI like a mind reader, treat it like a contractor. Write clear specs, break them down into tasks, and then let the AI handle execution.
James and Frank went further. They contrasted waterfall (where everything is specified upfront) with agile (where progress is iterative and requirements evolve). Their point was simple but profound: no matter the methodology, you can’t skip requirements. Even agile depends on clarity at each iteration.
The Programmer’s True Role
That’s when it clicked: my job as a human programmer isn’t to crank out lines of code anymore. The AI can do that faster than I ever could. My job is to reduce entropy.
I take vague ideas, half-baked business rules, and chaotic travel thoughts—and refine them into something structured. That’s the blueprint AI thrives on. Without it, I’m asking the model to improvise a symphony from random notes. With it, I get clean, working solutions in minutes.
Why Requirements Are the Real Magic
Spec Kit and similar tools are amazing, but they don’t remove the hardest part—they expose it. Writing good requirements is the bottleneck. Once that’s done, the rest flows.
Think of it this way:
- Vibe coding while traveling = chaos squared.
- Spec-driven clarity = progress even in noisy, unpredictable environments.
It’s not about choosing waterfall or agile. It’s about embracing the timeless truth that clarity upfront—whether in a full spec or a tight user story—is what makes AI effective.
Conclusion
My journey from vibe coding on the road to spec-driven clarity taught me that code is no longer the hardest problem. The real magic lies in writing requirements that reduce chaos and give AI a fighting chance to deliver.
So next time you feel tempted to vibe code—whether at home or 30,000 feet in the air—pause. Write the requirement. Structure the idea. Then let the AI do what it does best: execute clarity at scale.
Because in the end, humans reduce entropy. AI executes it.
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