Re:Names should be cute, not descriptive
by seti0Cha on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @01:26PM
(#34329199)
No, the alternative is having 100s of things that are basically right, with a few that are misleading. I'll take that any day over all cute names, because I only have to remember the exceptions. Not theoretical, I've been in that situation. Also, purpose drift is technical debt. Using meaningless names is just a way of hiding that debt. A service that doesn't match it's name has evolved into a bad place and needs to be refactored. You want to be able to see that.
Re:Names should be cute, not descriptive
by IshKebab on Tuesday January 10, 2023 @01:53PM
(#34329609)
This is the sort of nonsense argument people use to justify not writing comments. "But the comment might get outdated!!"
Yes it might. But it probably won't, or it will be obviously outdated, or outdated in trivial ways or you can use Git blame to check how the code was when it was written. All of which is better than no comments 99% of the time.
The number of times I've read a comment and eventually thought "oh damn that was misleading, I wish that comment wasn't there" is like... 10 in my whole life.
The number of times I've thought "why does the foo-service also do bar? I wish they'd named it completely randomly instead" is precisely zero.
Now imagine trying to navigate hundreds of things that are descriptively named wrong. The argument isn't between (A) cutesy names, and (B) accurate descriptive names. B is obviously better. But that's a fantasy world that doesn't exist. The argument is between A and (C) descriptive names that rot over time (quickly or slowly), which is actual reality.