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Showing posts from November, 2024

Why Naming Matters: Tips for Effective Naming Conventions

  In the world of IT, there’s a saying you often hear: There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. — Phil Karlton While this may be a joke, it also holds a kernel of truth. Naming things in software design often sparks heated debates, and there’s a reason for that. Good naming conventions can significantly impact the readability, maintainability, and overall quality of the code. Recently, I organized workshops to define our new platform API specification. Defining good names for the endpoints and parameters was a major part of these discussions. Establishing a few conventions and best practices upfront and referring back to them when in doubt helped remove subjectivity and emotion from the discussion, facilitating a more objective and productive dialogue. So here are some typical best practices for naming variables, endpoints, parameters, classes, attributes, tables, etc.: Clear : A name should be self-explanatory and clearly describe its i