Re:Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer
by shagie on Sunday August 25, 2019 @08:25PM
(#20796601)
The thing I found when naming things was to have as much information packed in the first syllable in a way that was reinforced by all the remaining syllables (that becomes more important when there are a variety of accents in the workplace).
One set of systems I worked on, a team had names based on islands. Two of the test machines were Trinidad and Tobago. Upon hearing the first syllable, it was clear that these were the test machines. Every additional bit beyond tri or tÆ was distinct and reinforcing that the first bit was heard correctly.
They also had boring names like dc2f1a3r1s4 and foo-test1 (depending on who was interested in the machine).
The problem that I've found with names like asfcap1234 is that one has to listen to every piece of information and remember it to properly identify the machine. With every character being important and distinct, there isn't any reinforcement or mnemonic checksum to make sure you've got it right.
I will note that this is from the era of servers (and even before VMs started being the thing).
It is very true that once humans no longer reference the machines by name, the ability to name them becomes less important.
One set of systems I worked on, a team had names based on islands. Two of the test machines were Trinidad and Tobago. Upon hearing the first syllable, it was clear that these were the test machines. Every additional bit beyond tri or tÆ was distinct and reinforcing that the first bit was heard correctly.
They also had boring names like dc2f1a3r1s4 and foo-test1 (depending on who was interested in the machine).
The problem that I've found with names like asfcap1234 is that one has to listen to every piece of information and remember it to properly identify the machine. With every character being important and distinct, there isn't any reinforcement or mnemonic checksum to make sure you've got it right.
I will note that this is from the era of servers (and even before VMs started being the thing).
It is very true that once humans no longer reference the machines by name, the ability to name them becomes less important.
As a counterpoint to RFC 1178, consider RFC 2100 - The Naming of Hosts https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2100