Do you use clear and meaningful names when coding?

[giscus[bot]]

bfcbc0ef-d2f8-4e77-85d9-97ccb841eb19

Naming things is hard, but also important. Using clear, meaningful names will make your code more readable and reduce cognitive load and risk for your development team.

https://www.ssw.com.au/rules/clear-meaningful-names/

[JackDevAU]

Having clear names is massive when working in teams, where there are constant devs coming and going. Being able to quickly make sense of code rapidly speeds up onboarding times. 🚀

[calumjs]

Not sure if I agree with the bad example at 3:51 - blanket ban on using "name"
If you're writing object oriented code and the variable is scoped to a class, the class gives context about what the name is.
e.g. product.name tells you it is the name of the product, you don't need to call it product.productName

Sure maybe with users/people it's a little more complex because people have first, last, full names, etc...

[jakebayliss]

My opinion was date was the better example of this. Even if Date was scoped to a class, you still need DateCreated, Modified, etc.

[tiagov8]

If your code forces others to pause and decipher it, you're already wasting valuable time.

[jakebayliss]

I think this rule is the most important of the lot. If a dev has to try to decode your variable names while figuring out what the code is doing then it makes it much more difficult

[TobyChurches]

I think @jernejk would agree with me when we say this is a extremely important rule!!! - We have worked on a project where a single entity has fields for CreatedOn and DateCreated 😬 Even after working on the project for a long time, I still have to check the wiki every time I debug the related feature

[bradystroud]

Its important to get this right from the start or you'll find yourself renaming stuff all the time which adds to the confusion.

These days we have autocomplete which means there is no downside to longer names

Figure: Cool first letter lookup to save typing long names

[jeoffreyfischer]

Consistency is also important because it directly impacts the readability, maintainability, and overall quality of the codebase

[andrewwaltosssw]

Naming can be difficult especially when the team is large. Following good standards like the ones listed here are important, but also keeping that consistent across the code base helps increase understanding and decrease frustration. OneArea_That_DevsCanGetSuperCreative_And_Verbose_Is_In_UnitTestMethodNames 🤣️

[StefStar]

I am not a developer however it always makes more sense to use established clear naming when labelling anything. In hospitality lots of food waste can occur in kitchens if items are not labelled correctly or following a standard ask me how I know....

[joshbermanssw]

This is the most important rule in my opinion - shortening or abbreviating always comes back to bite you if you end up trying to look back at code you wrote a while ago and make sense of it... also thoughtful for other devs.

[JeanThirion]

Fully disagree with not using "Name" or similar
It makes a lot of sense to have "Item.name" in a game or in a CMS like SharePoint.

What's the alternative ? Item.displayName ? No - because it's not necessarily just display.
item.internalName ? Won't work - this implies there's a displayName (which you don't necessarily need)
etc.

Otherwise good video

[SamBWagner]

I think product.name can, in an of itself, be wholly descriptive.

I think barcode.name is bad. name is descriptive, only when bestowed context from another source.

The prescription here is to be as specific as you can be. In the case of a user, just using name is not great because you can be more specific. i.e user.fullName or `user.lastName'.

more specificity, leads to a more descriptive name 👍

[tkapa]

Names should primarily be consistent.

Your naming conventions mean nothing if they aren't the same across your project

[isaaclombardssw]

Overuse of abbreviations has caused me a lot of pain in the past when trying to understand a piece of code, especially when a lot of seemingly-arbitrary numbers are involved (which ironically is where this happens most).

[vladislav-kir]

Meaningful names are very import to make the code easy to understand.

However, I am not 100% agree about using "name" or similar being a bad item.

As a variable name, "name" is not meaningful enough.

But as a property of a Class, I believe it is acceptable. For example, if you have classes Session, Presentation, etc... Them having a consistent property "Name" is better, than each of them having a unique property of that.

[bettybondoc]

When I was starting out as a dev, I misunderstood self-documenting code to mean writing lots of comments explaining everything I wrote. Over time, I realised it’s actually about writing code that speaks for itself—and a big part of that is using clear, meaningful names.

[steven0x51]

Clear naming is a big thing, especially in a big team. Every project should have a document about name convention.

[amankumarrr]

Consistency in naming conventions is crucial for code readability and maintainability. It ensures that new developers can quickly understand the codebase and helps prevent potential issues that might arise from unclear or inconsistent names. Clear and meaningful naming makes the code more intuitive and easier to work with.

[sam-s-maher]

One space I like to really ham up the variable names is for dictionaries - so instead of just 'birthdays' do something like 'birthdateByUserId', and then when iterating on this 'birthdateForUserId'. Would be keen to hear how others like to name theirs?

[sethdaily]

Even for a non developer this makes a lot of sense

[stephanfakossw]

N/A - I am a developer

I can definitely understand how important this is for devs

[Tanya-Leahy]

I am not a Developer, but can understand the need for following proper naming conventions. In previous roles, it was super important to follow a naming convention for consistency. I can see why this would be important also when coding.

[SamBWagner]

100%. I like all the suggestions here. The MOST important thing here is to keep your names *descriptivec and consistent.

If you can't articulate what the variable name means to a grandma in 1 sentence the identifier is likely bad.

[MattParkerDev]

This is super important for writing maintainable code.

[miichaelsmedley]

I am not a developer but with clear naming conventions as described above it means that someone who is not a developer can make sense of code.

[jimmidier]

Naming convention should be semantic and most importantly consistent across the project, for best readability and maintenance.

[ZenoWang1999]

One problem I frequently encounter is that many objects we need to name cannot be directly represented as very specific actions or entities. They might be middleware or more abstract concepts. In these cases, we often run into the issue of names becoming too long in an attempt to describe them comprehensively.

[tino-liu]

I have seen a function named "DoThis". Imagine the pain... "WHAT IT DO???"
I 100% agree that good naming convention makes everybody's life easier.

[babakamyljanovssw]

Having clear and consistent names across the project/company make easier for devs to join the team and understand the project quickly.

[Lewkans]

Having good naming conventions means that people reading your code can easily tell what it means, to understand the functionality much easier

[Aibono1225]

Well explained in the video, this rule is very important for maintainability and readability

[ozairashfaqueSSW]

Great rule and well explained in the video