Hard-g is wrong, and those who use it are showing they have zero respect for others when they don't have to.
It's the tech equivalent to the shopping cart problem. What do you do when there is no incentive one way or the other? Do you do the right thing, or do you disrespect others?
Naming is probably one of the few language areas that I think should be prescriptive, even while language at large is descriptive.
The G in gif is for graphics. Not 'giraffics'. And most people in the world have no idea what Jif even is, much less a particular catchphrase from an old ad campaign that barely even connects.
English has both pronunciations for "gi" based on origin. Giraffe, giant, ginger, etc from Latin; gift, give, (and presumably others) from Germanic roots.
Using the preferred one is just a matter of politeness.
Also, it's quite ironic to prescribe "linguistic prescriptivism" as wrong.
Wrt/ communication, aside from personal preference, one can either respect the creator, or the audience. If I stand in front of 10 colleagues, 10 out of them would not understand jif, or would only get it because this issue has some history now. gif on the other hand has no friction.
Ghengis Khan for example sounds very different from its original Mongolian pronunciation. And there is a myriad others as well.
I continue to pronounce it how I prefer it, not as a slight, but most people here would be surprised by the soft g.
If I ever meet him I’ll attempt to pronounce it soft-g.
On the other hand, even though my name exists and is reasonably common in English, I’m fairly certain neither you or the GIF creator would address me the way I pronounce my name. I would understand anyway, and wouldn’t care one bit.
The debate itself is old. "Since the 90s" Wikipedia says, and keep in mind the format was is from 1987 - so I would say the debate is on from the get-go. Appropriate, too, if you think back, arguing about this kind of stuff was pretty common. Emacs vs vim, browser wars, different kinds of computers, tribalism everywhere.
https://file.org/extension/jif
https://fileinfo.com/extension/jiff
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4rirr8/til_t...
