The mistake the author is making is that indeed his friend Sam will still be Sam (even if he changes jobs) but he is a human that exists regardless of his function. Variable names’ on the other hand only exist to serve a function, when the function is gone the names that refer to it should be gone too. If you have a ml-worker node and you no longer need an ml worker, you refactor the code to remove those. It’s much easier to remove than to rename, and consistent mild refactoring ( or code massage if you will) means you’re more likely to remember what lurks in the dark corners of your code base.
Names should be cute, not descriptive
41–50 of 498 posts
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#42Cute names are human readable. Descriptive names are hard to search for and hard to say. They are often overloaded. Best are cute but descriptive acronyms. Your brain remembers cute more, so optimize for your brain.
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but surely there is a directory somewhere that explains this? I mean - the problem is not the number of names but the number of services. A new hire still isn't going to be able to work out what a service does just based on the name, regardless of how whimsical or apt it is. "policy-engine" might seem to be a good name for a service, but it's only one level below "kevin" in terms of opaqueness, especially when t…
"policy-engine" is an example of a name that is neither cute nor descriptive
It's an example of descriptive but how being terse, descriptive, and unique is quite difficult.
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#44I wouldn't necessarily call them cute, but "Odin" (my phone), "Tyr" (my NAS) and "Thor" (my home server) would surely agree.
Cute names don't scale.
You can name your servers after star trek characters, and routers after star wars characters, only if you have very few.
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#45Just don't apply this to variable or function names please, thanks!
What? You don't want to sift through hundreds of pokemon and anime characters names totally unrelated to the variables and functions of the API you need to use for your job? I'll just write "not a team player" in your annual review.
I'm going through it right now, refactoring https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk
honk, zonk, honker, dunk, xonk... the list goes on. This is supposed to be ActivityPub server.
Fun. Not.
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but surely there is a directory somewhere that explains this? I mean - the problem is not the number of names but the number of services. A new hire still isn't going to be able to work out what a service does just based on the name, regardless of how whimsical or apt it is. "policy-engine" might seem to be a good name for a service, but it's only one level below "kevin" in terms of opaqueness, especially when t…
"policy-engine" is an example of a name that is neither cute nor descriptive
But that's my point. You start writing a new policy engine, and you think the name is obviously descriptive. But in 12 months time, it's not so obvious any more, and also you probably have 3 different policy engines for different use cases.
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#47Cute names are fun when for a few special things here and there. Cute names are a nightmare when a company has accumulated hundreds of quirkily named things that you have to memorize just to navigate through the basics of trying to get your job done. New hires suffer the most. It’s an extra layer of company-specific jargon that you have to learn to even begin to understand what your peers are talking about.
how else will you know they are new hires? They will have to spend time petting the fuzzBear just like everyone else!
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flagged to death. Sigh… Kinda proves your point.
Probably because it appears they are fishing for a political fight, and they are referencing their own vaguely related post from four days ago as if someone else wrote it ten years ago.
How is a comment talking about whimsical content "only vaguely related"?
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#49TFA is based on a false dichotomy. You can have both.
At one of my latest workplaces, there was a system of loosely connected, branching event-driven processing nodes where the events accumulated additional data as they rippled through the system.
In the code and UI, this was represented as "heroes", coming from "guilds", "embarking" on "quests", eventually meeting their "reaper". On their quests, they entered "locations" containing "pickpockets" that pulled things out of (and put things back into) the hero's "inventory".
This cute-but-descriptive vocabulary really helped less technical people grasp how it all fit together -- even if it was a complete lie and gave the wrong picture of how the system worked under the hood.
(In particular, it is a common misconception that the heroes are driving the action by choosing locations to go to, when in fact it is the locations (processing nodes) that pull heroes (event data) along. But that misunderstanding never caused a problem in the four-ish years I worked with the system.)
Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably because it appears they are fishing for a political fight, and they are referencing their own vaguely related post from four days ago as if someone else wrote it ten years ago.
How is a comment talking about whimsical content "only vaguely related"?
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