←back to thread

311 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
benrutter ◴[] No.46237011[source]
> Our field deserves better than a zoo of random nouns masquerading as professional nomenclature. Clarity isn’t boring, it’s respect for your users’ time and cognitive resources.

I felt a little guilty at first, I maintain a project called Wimsey (it's a data testing library but you couldn't guess that) and at work my team regularly enjoys fun/silly names.

Trying to defend myself, I was thinking about various logical responses to this article: non-descriptive names don't become out of place when a projects goals drift; descriptive names will lead to repitition; etc.

If I'm honest though, I think I just like software to have a sense, even a tiny one, of enjoyment.

The software I use everyday, like Cron (named after a greek god of time); Python (named after a comedy act) and Zellij (names after a tiling craft) all have fun, joyful names that tell me someone loved and cared about these projects when they built them.

I need to learn these tools beyond just "x does y category of thing" anyway, so I don't mind learning these names. And it makes software engineering just a bit more fun than using "unix-scheduler", "object-oriented-scripting-lang" or "terminal-display-manager".

I love working in a field where people are passionate about their craft. Stern professionalism doesn't sound like something I want to trade that for.

It's a human trait to name the things we love, that's the exact reason why pets typically have names like "cookie" and not "brown-dog-2".

replies(3): >>46237284 #>>46238772 #>>46239584 #
wredcoll ◴[] No.46238772[source]
Naming your library "data-testing-library" would be useful... until there's a second one at which point the specific name effectively becomes meaningless.
replies(1): >>46240953 #
1. marc_abonce ◴[] No.46240953[source]
Case in point: @testing-library (the JS one for React, Vue, etc.)

Besides, this type of overly generic names makes it harder to search relevant stuff, which makes them more annoying to me than silly names.