Names should be cute, not descriptive • Hacker News Board

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#111

Post by ilyt » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:42 AM UTC

extr wrote: post #20

Nice theory. In practice all this does is make it harder to onboard new people. Quick test: It's your 2nd week on the job. Some core system just went down, and you've been assigned to figure out what service is causing the trouble. What makes for easier, more transparent reading of error logs, the name "ServiceRouter", or the name "Trainstation"? It's not just a matter of the name being perfectly descriptive for any…

> That makes for easier, more transparent reading of error logs, the name "ServiceRouter", or the name "Trainstation"?

What service ? Routing it where? The "descriptive" here isn't describing anything useful.

"OrderBaseket" is descriptive. "sso-portal" is descriptive. "ServiceRouter" just uses few related words to the job. My blog is also "serviceRouter"...

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#112

Post by andy_ppp » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:42 AM UTC

beefield wrote: post #110

Well, I have worked in an environment where database server names were server software version concatenated with a shortish but high entropy random alphanumeric string. I'll take cute or descriptive any day over that.

Yes, some places I’ve worked named servers with four numbers separated by full stops, it was crazy!

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#113

Post by Sholmesy » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:43 AM UTC

I've never disagreed with something more.

> On the other hand, something that's cute will be far more memorable and much easier to say.

Citation needed?

How is easier to associate with "Ingest, Processing, & Storage of Thing" than ?

EDIT: On closer inspection, I think this is intentional HN rage bait.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#114

Post by voytec » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:45 AM UTC

ihatepython wrote: post #93

mostertoaster wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because cook books while useful, aren’t entertaining stories. Now if they named it after a good character from a story everyone knows, say the hunter from the big bad wolf, and it’s purpose was to chop up evil wolves taking advantage of grandmas and little girls with baked goods, then everyone knows that character, and as long as the purpose of the service is to defeat impostors trying to do harm then it is f…

My default is to name the project something related to Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Then when things go off the rails, I can say 'Shaka, when the walls fell'

Names of my mail systems :)

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#115

Post by xvilka » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:46 AM UTC

Or use names of Lovecraftian deities. It better resembles the spirit of the industry.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#116

Post by bryanrasmussen » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:47 AM UTC

doctor_eval wrote: post #46

ummonk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Ok but the image-optimization-engine that Carl wrote still seems descriptive to me those same 12 months later.

So I think policy-engine might have seemed descriptive but it just wasn't whereas image-optimization-engine was descriptive.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#117

Post by jrib » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:48 AM UTC

jonstewart wrote: post #109

I work as a developer at a consulting company, and the consultants are constantly writing new scripts, Excel templates, and so on. Most are early career and get excited about having created something new, so they like using cute names. The practice has been to use a bird name. So my life consists of bewildering sentences about how raven is old and busted but blue throat will handle this situation, especially if used…

We use bear names. It is fun and at this point (for me) the names are second nature.

But the company merged recently with a couple of other companies and the confusion about polar bears versus grizzly bears versus panda bears is pretty funny at times (and counter-productive).

I try to use both the code name and the descriptive name. So now I say something like: "grizzly marshmallow roaster" instead of just "grizzly".

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#118

Post by jeroenhd » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

germanfella wrote: post #55

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…

Would this be easier if you needed to integrate with user-provider-service, timestamp-conversion-service, image-storage-service (which also stores videos these days, though HEIFF and h.265 has obviously been moved to iOS-image-storage-service so customers can be billed for the special software that requires patents) to upload a signed SecuredApplicationPackage file to InternalExternalSoftwareManager so that it can be included in the application_distributor next time ReleaseMgr decides to update its endpoints?

What, you forgot to integrate with the SecondaryDataValidationService? How is it supposed to work without SecondaryDataValidationService? Are you even a real programmer?

God forbid you use the old DataValidationService or ReplacementDataValidationService, those have been deprecated for years. And you don't want to make a fool of yourself by using ImageStore instead of image-storage-service, ImageStore is clearly for operating system images not pictures! And what are you doing touching IntermediateDataLayer? That's only for enterprise customers, shouldn't that be obvious? It'd like adding a dependency to CachingLayerV2 to a ServerSideSoftware deployment package, simply ridiculous!

If you have a forest of microservices to browse through, it doesn't matter if they're named after pokemon or if some engineer came up with a descriptive name. You need a guide either way, because half of the services that sound like they may be relevant do something completely irrelevant or have been put in maintenance only mode years ago anyway.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#119

Post by EFreethought » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:49 AM UTC

28304283409234 wrote: post #78

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds more like architectural/tooling problem. We use pretty much random names for our servers and other hardware, but all of that is abstracted so during normal operation you don't even know what thing you are using unless you want to for some reason. I am not really for or against using names instead of numbers or whatever, because I should never even need to care if things are done right.

I heard that Ifthingsaredoneright is a really nice planet to visit one day.

It's better than being on planet someonewasintentionallystupid.

Re: Names should be cute, not descriptive

#120

Post by Shank » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 11:50 AM UTC

At my company, we have an app called "rails app". It's the main app we have, and it's hosted in rails. Makes for some interesting discussions about what rails is truly capable of, what features are rails features or are rails features, etc.