Common Lisp is a truly awful offender in this regard, with "cute" slightly-abbreviated opaque names for subtly-varying concepts.

EQ/EQL/EQUAL/EQUALP, PROCLAIM/DECLAIM/DECLARE, and the atrocious PAIRLIS (really??). And not to mention the fact that PAIRLIS returns an association list, which is entirely different from a "plist".

And then of course CAR, CDR, CADR, CDDR, et alia.

This is all second nature for an experienced Lisp programmer, but it makes for a difficult learning experience.

I mostly agree with this comment except “dequeue” is a bad example. C++ has called this data structure “deque” (pronounced deck) since the beginning of the STL. Is there another language/library that spells it dequeue?

For better or worse, Rust calls it a VecDeque, but I think this is meant to clarify that the structure is just Vec storage with some extra methods on top to provide convenient ring buffer usage patterns:

https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/collections/struct.VecDeque.ht...

> Is there another language/library that spells it dequeue?

Yes.

  https://www.npmjs.com/package/dequeue
  https://api.jquery.com/dequeue/
  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.collections.generic.queue-1.dequeue?view=net-5.0

.NET uses Dequeue as a verb, not a noun though.

Perhaps that's another reason to call the data structure a "Deque" since "Dequeue" is already used for the verb meaning "to remove an item from a queue."

It's also for a completely different purpose, but I was answering about the spelling as a direct answer to a question.

You are correct. But more important is internal consistency - and adherence to the consistency rules of the eco-system. This allows to deduce naming of API-Elements after a while. So the most important rule is- do not be creative. Think like a bureaucrat, adhere to the standards and the ecosystem around you.

I hate this field so much. That anyone creative chooses willingly to go into software is a miracle. Are there people out their with pre-broken spirits, that want to join this soul-less galley of horrors? Starvation should be preferable to this. But i digress..

Why not make naming something that can be personalized? Make the variablename a sort of rule-based-building-block-lego-system, that can be adapted by the user.

Increment+Variable -> "upIndex" for you Increment+Variable -> "incVar" for me. Everyone is happy, the frameworks and apis only specify the buildingblocks as variableNames.. autotranslated variableNames, customized to everyones flavour.

Hooray, i contributed. Prolonging the nightmare.