[peter_hilton]

> the advice either has little value or doesn't really apply to programming

When I give this talk, I make this clear. I agree. The point is that there's a lot more good advice from writers over the fine details of prose than there is from coders about fine details of code, such as naming. In the talk, I conclude that the advice from writers is entertaining, but not really relevant, but that it can inspire us to try to come up with our own guidelines for naming.

> We have these rules in programming for how to write variable names

Not enough. Also, they tend to be badly written and lack humour. But please share your favourites.

> when writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature

This is a digression from coding to functional design, in which 'personas' can be a useful refinement of the concept of an anonymous 'user'.