[kixiQu]

I believe strongly in this counterargument:

https://medium.com/better-programming/software-component-nam...

Small summary: external identifiers are hard to change, so projects will evolve such that they are not accurately descriptive after time.

(Less discussed there, but: In a complex or decentralized ecosystem, it's also the case that you come across many "X Manager"/"X Service"/"X State Manager"/"X Workflow Service" simultaneously, and then have to rely on a lot of thick context to know what the distinctions are)

[parpfish]

I’ve been told multiple times in multiple jobs that I’m good at naming things, and I love whimsical names. A couple rules I’ve internalized are:

- if it’s hard to name, that’s a good sign that you haven’t clearly delineated use case or set of responsibilities for the thing

- best case for a name is that it’s weird and whimsical on first encounter. Then when somebody tells you the meaning/backstory for the name it reveals some deeper meaning/history that makes it really memorable and cements it in your mind

- the single best tech naming thing I’ve encountered (I didn’t come up with it) was the A/B testing team at Spotify naming themselves “ABBA”

[zahlman]

> I’ve been told multiple times in multiple jobs that I’m good at naming things, and I love whimsical names.

As long as you're naming products and features, rather than variables.

[parpfish]

oh yeah, definitely. for variables its best to exclusively use obscure unicode.

[mbg721]

The winner takes it all!

[tomnicholas1]

God this article is 10000% better than the posted one. This is great:

> Names should not describe what you currently think the thing you’re naming is for. Imagine naming your newborn child "Doctor", or "SupportsMeInMyOldAge". Poor kid.

[Umofomia]

I totally agree with this, and will add that another benefit of whimsical names is discoverability. If your project is named plugin-update-checker and I want to find documentation on it, it's likely going to be buried in a bunch of other irrelevant search results about plugin update checkers in general. If it was called SocketToMe instead, I'm going to find much better search results.

[tstenner]

Go.

[pksebben]

I suppose it depends on your goals, but that scope restraint can be a good thing.

Do one thing, do it well, and while you're at it call yourself by the thing you do so you remember that's what you ought to be doing. A bit wordy for unix but you get the idea.