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by halfnormalform 1088 days ago
The latter is probably a better name if there are other functions involving "ownership" (give_ownership, split_ownership, etc.), but otherwise you're right.
1 comments

Yep, I've seen situations where the programmer goes for brevity, and then runs into problems in the future when they want to "be consistent"

take_ownership -> acquire (fine at first)

give_ownership -> unacquire (not even a word)

split_ownership -> halfacquire (complete nonsense)

then there needs to be a way to split ownership other than an equal 2-way split and you're fucked.

I haven't seen this exact situation, but I've seen stuff like this. And sometimes, I was the programmer.

Names should be as short as possible while still being meaningful AND keeping in mind future work requirements.

On a tangent, I'm always frustrated when as a developer, I don't learn much about the actual business. There's always a situation down the road where if you had known what the company was planning on doing in the next quarter, or couple years, you could have saved everyone some work by doing things differently.

unacquire

This reminds me of when some code was lightly edited to remove references to "master" and "slave", only to end up with a function "enminion".