How Developers Choose Names • Hacker News Board

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#11

Post by dudeman13 » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

slver wrote: 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.

How do you know that there isn't meaning, order and correctness if you don't search for it?

There are very few situations where you can definitely say that there isn't meaning, order and correctness as opposed to not knowing if you are just too dumb to find them.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#12

Post by mod » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #10

froh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the app is broken now because we relied on the autoincrement id column never having a missing value and didn't handle the error when it has one missing.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#13

Post by karmakaze » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

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

Sorting actually isn't one, at least anymore. Exact once and in-order delivery although part of 'distributed' computing should be, since most computing is distributed, right down to our multicore processing hardware.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#14

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

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

Don't forget time comparison.

Your unit test of a function comparing dates relies on server time and usually fails if run around 12pm. Whatever. Nobody uses this app around lunch time anyway. Just tell your teammates in the to ignore that. Wait, why is the test failing every time today?! Did we just switch to DST? Uh oh...

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#15

Post by zexodus » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

Research like this could lead to IDE's suggesting names for some of our methods. Exciting!

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#16

Post by papito » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #14

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

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

Don't forget time comparison. Your unit test of a function comparing dates relies on server time and usually fails if run around 12pm. Whatever. Nobody uses this app around lunch time anyway. Just tell your teammates in the to ignore that. Wait, why is the test failing every time today?! Did we just switch to DST? Uh oh...

This has to come with a trigger warning.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#17

Post by papito » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

cbcoutinho wrote: post #7

slver wrote: 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

Sure, but now it's actually DE-volving our society in form of QAnon and religious "interpretations", and technology here is not blameless in the least.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#18

Post by selfsimilar » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

cbcoutinho wrote: post #7

slver wrote: 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

Pedant note: eschew means ‘to go without’. You probably meant ‘assigning’.

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#19

Post by adithyasrin » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

Variable names are alright, available domain names are a different beast

Re: How Developers Choose Names

#20

Post by karmakaze » Sun, Apr 18, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

rileymat2 wrote: post #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 appear…

This is a actually the way I name important things. There's even a 4th step: Choose only a few of the important or distinguishing concepts to include in the name. For examples in a database model you end up with x_y_z_name_id because of relations on relations, that might get reduced to y_z_name or x_z_name, dropping the part that is of widest/implicit context.