"policy-engine" is an example of a name that is neither cute nor descriptive

It's an example of descriptive but how being terse, descriptive, and unique is quite difficult.

But that's my point. You start writing a new policy engine, and you think the name is obviously descriptive. But in 12 months time, it's not so obvious any more, and also you probably have 3 different policy engines for different use cases.

Anybody who thinks it's descriptive even at the start is an idiot.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Ok but the image-optimization-engine that Carl wrote still seems descriptive to me those same 12 months later.

So I think policy-engine might have seemed descriptive but it just wasn't whereas image-optimization-engine was descriptive.

At least until it also starts converting gifs to webm, and soon other formats like mp4, and since it's being used for video it needs subtitle support in various languages.

You mean a generic policy-engine? One that reads code-as-configuration from a database, executes arbitrary I/O, and gives back a result?

Very few times somebody starts something like this. And yes, they do have cute names, because they don't have any short identification.

>Yeah but surely there is a directory somewhere that explains this?

No, there's 5 different directories in 3 different formats compiled across the last 8 years representing the state of 80% of terms at the time it was last updated, half of which disagree with another version.

I gotta say, I think that's actually just bad technical management, so I suppose it's probably common. Although I will admit Conway's law here.

Nevertheless, the same phenomenon that leads to multiple directories will also mean that supposedly "descriptive" names, will not be.

I can confirm this

Directories somewhere that pedagoically explain all the codenames, nah that doesn't necessarily exist in the company until it grows larger. It might just be a quagmire for new hires in a growing company.

A directory does wonders. Make it hierarchical too. That way different zones can have different values.

It can point "policy-engine" to which host runs it. Or, even better, make it resolve the IP address directly!