

Naming Things - flavioribeiro
http://blog.flavioribeiro.com/naming-things/

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Doctor_Fegg
So. Many. Bad. Names.

The whole Travis/Jenkins/Hudson thing baffles me. Yes, they're all butlers. I
can never remember which one is which. And since I'm English, butlers
represent the worst of the old, deferential world, the world I spend half my
life fighting against... and that's precisely why IMHO they're unsuitable
names for anything open-source.

"therubyracer". It's something to do with Ruby. It's presumably quite fast.
This isn't telling me much.

But then, I've released a fair amount of shockingly badly named stuff myself,
so I should stop here. Other than to improve on the quote that begins TFA:

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation,
naming things, and off-by-one errors."

~~~
rpsw
I get why Jenkins kept the butler theme, seeing as it was a fork of Hudson by
some of the main developers. But yeah, it can cause confusion.

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8ig8
When I switched away from MS Office apps to Apple's equivalents, it was such a
pain googling for help in "Numbers" and "Pages". The app names are so generic
it was frustrating finding relevant results.

How do I "insert page numbers in Pages"?

How do I "round down in Numbers"?

Edit: I guess "Word" is not much better.

~~~
benbou09
Indeed... How do people google stuff like C or Go ?

~~~
spurgu
When I studied Go I found that searching for "golang" instead worked well.

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praptak
Fun fact: _Streams-analyzer_ , _EvoHandler_ and their ilk are recognized by
the reputable compendium of general knowledge that TVTrope is:
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NounVerber](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NounVerber)

~~~
flavioribeiro
NounVerber, hehehe... this is a term I didn't know. thank you for sharing
this.

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professorTuring
Wikipedia Random is the best name generator ever:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random)

Naming that special machine that...: Rolling... "Troisdorf"

Naming that web project project...: Rolling... "Mimeresia cellularis"

Works like a charm (sometimes I just roll three times for one name).

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henrik_w
"Code Complete" by Steve McConnell has the best advice on naming classes,
,methods and variables that I have read (don't have the book handy here, so
can't give examples right now).

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dal
You should check out my little site about naming stuff:
[http://namingschemes.com](http://namingschemes.com)

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greenyoda
"Marmota" is definitely a cool name for software. However, it isn't just
Portugese; it's also the scientific name for a genus of rodents (marmots) that
includes groundhogs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot)

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jakobe
When I named my apps, I just tried to come up with the most descriptive name
possible. ("MDB Viewer", "PG Commander"). I really want people who look at
search engine result pages and app store listings to immediately recognize
what my app is good for.

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jeessy
Great article, good naming is powerful but it is damn hard.

Lately, I've been working on a project called Office Garden (officegarden.lu).
It's interesting to see how people react to my pitch depending on when I give
the app's name.

~~~
bbrks
Even after visiting your website, I have no idea what Office Garden actually
is or does. Maybe I'll find out if I enter my e-mail address into your form...

But then again, maybe not, and my email would end up on yet another list I
don't want.

~~~
jeessy
Well you're right, it's still in private beta so I didn't put much information
about it on the homepage.

Office Garden is a platform where employees from the same company get to know
each other, have fun and share their interests. We deeply believe that happy
employees build more successful businesses.

~~~
sejje
At most of my jobs, I'd have been happier if I didn't know my co-workers.

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jpdlla
This is always hard even when naming variables, functions, and classes. I
always try to be as verbose as possible and sometimes spend like 10 minutes
just pondering of a name.

