Naming Things: the Most Underrated Skill in Software Development

Just remembering this famous quote :

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

-- Phil Karlton"

Totally agree. Hardware engineers especially need to learn this. They can't stand using clear variable names; everything needs to be abbreviated to death. No_vwls_allwd.

So infuriating.

Good points, also I’ve just almost completely let AI handle this. I don’t use it to write code for me yet but I will be lazy and ask it this prompt, “what should I name this variable (or function) that describes this or does this?”

Names are also a good way to determine how to draw boundaries between data, between code, etc. If you can give something a concise, descriptive, and intuitive name you can usually pull it out into its own function, type, etc. and it will _improve_ readability, since the name adds information and abstracts the implementation well. Names are also a good heuristic for whether your abstractions and boundaries are good. If they require verbose, misleading, or unintuitive names you may need to redraw those boundaries and abstractions.

World_street_car_tire_nut_object cause everything is a object..