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What’s in a name

December 17th, 2009 No comments

I’ve run into a couple naming issues this week. Some more serious than others…

First thing that apparently needs to be brought up: do not touch built-in language names. Languages mean things, only when the language exists. If you start overriding names, nothing makes sense. I was working on a script this week that just didn’t work right. Took me a bit of digging to realize that the keywords ‘type’, ‘file’, and ‘os’ were used as variable names. Fun, no. Headache, yes.

The other naming issue is using names that are hard to search for. We have a project where I work that is named ‘go’. Filtering by ‘go’ in my e-mail doesn’t do anything useful. Searching for ‘go’ in our bug system is pretty pointless too. The funniest issue with the word ‘go’ is when it’s discussed in conversation. The name just roles into language and your ear just doesn’t pick up that you‘re talking about a tool.

Oh, and while we’re on this issue, even if a word may make sense in context, please consider how it will be discussed. Talking about delivering and ingesting just doesn’t sound right. Why can’t we all upload and download?

Respect names. They mean things.

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