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How Developers Choose Names

arxiv.org

1–10 of 157 posts

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#5
> Based on the results of this experiment we developed a 3-step model of how names are constructed: (1) selecting the concepts to include in the name, (2) choosing the words to represent each concept, and (3) creating a name from these words.

This seems flawed, when I look to name something, one of the most key things is what other things are named in that context, and patterns and consistency between them.

It appears the study described a problem, instead of putting them in preexisting code?

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#6
post #3

Naming things - one of the four hardest problems in computing (the others are sorting and off-by-one errors) :)

Looks like you need to invalidate your cache of hardest problems in computing ;)

Proper caching makes any problem 10x as hard.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#7
post #4

One of the most cruel things evolution did to us is that we constantly seek meaning, order, correctness, where there are none to speak of.

I'd argue that the ability to unite people by assigning meaning onto things, places, and ideas is the single reason why humans have been so successful in advancing civilization to where it is today.

Edit: eschew -> assign

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#9
I would be interested if any task-performance based studies had been run with different naming schemes and enough developers to see which naming conventions worked best. Some simple job like fixing a bug or a simple refactoring, judged on time to completion and correctness.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#10
post #8

Naming things - one of the four hardest problems in computing (the others are sorting and off-by-one errors) :)

five... naming, sorting, of by one concurrency errors and.

I see a transaction rolled back, and the autoincrement id column no longer matches the row count.
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