Where the Name Inorderly Comes From

Inorderly is two phrases run together. “In order” is the job: events lined up one after another, the way they should be. “Orderly” is the manner: calm, tidy, no surprises. Put them side by side and you get a word that describes what the engine does and how it behaves while doing it.

It also reads as a small joke. Events show up out of order, and they leave in order. The name sits right in the middle of that.

Why Not a Plainer Name

The obvious names were taken by other ideas. “Sorter” sounds like it sorts a finished list, when Inorderly works on a live stream it can’t see the end of. “Sequencer” belongs to music software and to trading systems that hand out numbers. “Reorder” and “dedupe” each name half of the job and make it sound like cleanup after the fact.

What Inorderly sells is the promise that the order is the same every time. A word that sounds steady and a little old-fashioned fits that better than one that sounds fast.

How to Say It

In-OR-der-lee, like “in order” with “-ly” on the end. It’s written Inorderly, one word with a capital I, and the command and the Go package are inorderly.