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Names should be cute, not descriptive

ntietz.com

81–90 of 498 posts

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#81
Don't do this. I see these names as just obvious ways to describe what things do like variables. I wouldn't want to be reading code like ``` beeblebrox = zaphod + trillian ``` similarly names of services in architecture diagram shouldn't be undecipherable (outside of perhaps ultra secret projects -- then maybe those agencies should have a name generator :) ). The cute names even if based on some theme get very old and the cultural context almost always gets lost once the company/team outgrows. Also it's a much easier to refactor away a new service if lets say you find yourself adding a completely unrelated feature to a service named "accounting" or something boring,whereas if you named it "hades" or something cutesy, you don't have any indicator whether the feature has outgrown. I've found it much easier to deprecate/sunset services and systems when they're obviously named too. One exception I'd say is when nicknames just arise and it becomes obvious to call it that. It's very rare and it happens. Borg at google is perhaps a good example here. It's so all encompassing that it's obvious what it means and calling it another name like "container orchestrator" or something similar perhaps doesn't have same gravitas. I think Microsoft had something called Autopilot which is even clearer but not it can be applied to many things.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#82
My approach is cute or funny names based on abbreviations, e.g.:

- trump - totally reversible universal manipulation protocol

- Biden - booked Internet device expense network

That way a cute name has a meaning. Additionally one can change the abbreviation if the purpose changes!

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#84

You're optimizing for the wrong things and working with an artificially limited set of constraints. The rule of thumb is that we spend 10x the amount of time reading code that we do writing it. When you use cute names to avoid the pain of name changes when the service changes, you're optimizing for writing over reading. It's a mistake. You pay the cost of a name change once, but you pay the cost of an unclear name ma…

This is good advice in the small, but I think the author is correct for larger services. I can't tell you how many times someone insisted on a name that was "universal such and such" which, uh, turned out not to be universal.

More concretely, this is good advice for services that you expect many teams to hook into, and not great advice for services that you think should not expand 1-3 teams ever.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#85
I think "either this or that" type of thinking is unfit for the topic. A better strategy is to setup a priority: making the name descriptive should be very close to the top, and making it also cute should be somewhere down the line.

Also, cute is really subjective. Personally I think "Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery" is cute and "cli-anal-stats" is very cute, even through you might not think of it the same. The advantage of descriptive names is that it's more recognizable, you read the name, you knew what they do, and that's cute for me.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#86
I’m at a mid size company that is currently moving away from cute names onto meaningful names.

I’m glad we’re going in this direction as the onboarding process was painful, trying to piece together so many arbitrary facts, and I’m reminded of this pain every time someone joins and I have to talk them through architecture diagrams.

Using meaningful names will force us to maintain microservices that honour the single responsibility principle.

Scope creep is a form of tech debt, which must be repaid as opposed to being tacitly endorsed by naming services with mutability in mind.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#88
Title is wrong, should be "Thank You Mario, But Princess Peach Is in Another Castle!"

/s

If you disagree with that, then maybe you are in favour of descriptive, not cute, names after all.

I really thought that we had moved past this "cute pop culture reference naming" idea, but here it comes back again. Just no.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#90

I made an account on HN because this is the worst post I have ever read here. NO!!!! DON'T USE CUTE NAMES!!! I am currently working with a big company for my apps and it is full of cute names which are the biggest problem for me. To launch an app you have first to integrate the Zaamla-Service into your IDE. Then just patch things up with Pimble, upload the signed HIMA-Package into the Katala and activate after that Z…

Doesn’t sound like that would be any easier with different names
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