Consider a new name for Metrics Meter interface

[jmacd]

See this comment:

On the "The/A" distinction: For me, the name Meter is an odd one, in that I think of a "meter" as a thing that measures something, rather than a source of very many things that measure a wide variety of things. I know we're trying to avoid the Factory word, but having this be a singular english noun is quite confusing to me. Meters would be more evocative.

I agree that Meter is somehow not quite right. It has the nice property of ending with -er like Tracer, but otherwise the word "Meter" in common language does not describe a measuring device. I've been using "Instrument" to describe the things returned by this interface, but even "Instrumenter" isn't much of a word. Maybe "Meters" is OK, but I'd actually prefer "Metrics" in one form for this concept. As is being discussed in #354 for Tracers, maybe something like "MetricsSource" or "MetricsRoot" works?

[jmacd]

Another reason to avoid "Meter" is that it's used in other libraries to mean something quite different.

https://metrics.dropwizard.io/4.1.1/manual/core.html#man-core-meters

[bogdandrutu]

Another reason to avoid "Meter" is that it's used in other libraries to mean something quite different.

We've already decide that this is not very important, because the same reason can be applied to Gauge and that is probably more important than Meter.

[jkwatson]

Somehow I missed this issue getting created.

Currently, the Java APIs, the Meter is the "factory" class for creating builders (sigh, java) for the various Metric implementations. Hence, Metrics feels like an excellent, easy-to-grok place to go to create your Metrics, whereas Meter is just confusing (to me).

Part of that confusion is as @jmacd mentioned, because I'm used to working with Micrometer metrics, which has Meter as the base interface for all the various kind of instruments provided.

[jmacd]

Just to pile on, I would say there is a substantial difference between the confusion from Meter as compared with Gauge. The OTel Gauge is the same kind of thing -- an instrument -- as it is in many APIs. The OTel Meter is a different kind of thing -- a reference to the SDK -- than in the Micrometer / DropWizard APIs.

[jmacd]

I don't think we've made progress. I'm inclined to close this.

[jkwatson]

I guess so. I still think it's a confusing name for what it is, but if no one else is on board with changing it, then we should close it. I'd love to have some users provide some feedback, rather those of us living in the echo chamber.