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Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

(larr.net)
330 points todsacerdoti | 3 comments | 11 Dec 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.452s | source
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kixiQu ◴[11 Dec 25 21:27 UTC] No.46237390[source]▶
I believe strongly in this counterargument:

https://medium.com/better-programming/software-component-nam...

Small summary: external identifiers are hard to change, so projects will evolve such that they are not accurately descriptive after time.

(Less discussed there, but: In a complex or decentralized ecosystem, it's also the case that you come across many "X Manager"/"X Service"/"X State Manager"/"X Workflow Service" simultaneously, and then have to rely on a lot of thick context to know what the distinctions are)

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1. parpfish ◴[12 Dec 25 01:20 UTC] No.46239759[source]▶
I’ve been told multiple times in multiple jobs that I’m good at naming things, and I love whimsical names. A couple rules I’ve internalized are:

- if it’s hard to name, that’s a good sign that you haven’t clearly delineated use case or set of responsibilities for the thing

- best case for a name is that it’s weird and whimsical on first encounter. Then when somebody tells you the meaning/backstory for the name it reveals some deeper meaning/history that makes it really memorable and cements it in your mind

- the single best tech naming thing I’ve encountered (I didn’t come up with it) was the A/B testing team at Spotify naming themselves “ABBA”

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2. mbg721 ◴[12 Dec 25 01:21 UTC] No.46239769[source]▶
The winner takes it all!
3. zahlman ◴[12 Dec 25 03:03 UTC] No.46240413[source]▶
> I’ve been told multiple times in multiple jobs that I’m good at naming things, and I love whimsical names.

As long as you're naming products and features, rather than variables.