Naming Things: The Hardest Problem in Software Engineering

by Tom Benner

Naming is one of the most difficult and enduring challenges in software engineering, but few of us do it well. This practical and comprehensive book provides a set of principles, rules, and application guidelines for efficiently choosing good names in your code.

These skills can be used throughout your career, and they’re useful for every programming language, technical domain, and experience level. The book incorporates real-world examples to illustrate how to choose good names and avoid bad names.

This book for how to choose good names and avoid bad namesPrinciples to help you remember the general qualities of good namesReal-world examplesGuidelines on the application of these rules and principles, including balancing tradeoffs, renaming best practices, and choosing domain-specific namesTips on how to develop your naming skills throughout your career
Changes in the second concisenessRemoval of less important contentGrammatical improvementsFormatting improvements

Genres: Programming, Technology, Software, Coding, Nonfiction, Computer Science

100 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 24, 2023

Reviews

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great concise read on all the rules we think about implicitly but don’t state.

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, brief lecture on the common & widespread linguistic conventions for naming "things" while writing software. No, it's NOT a book on notations (Hungarian, etc.) - it's much more universal & also tech-agnostic. It does answer the question of how to properly name a variable, a function, or a class. But it covers the syntactic aspects, not semantics!

How useful is that?
1. on one hand - very useful because the rules presented here are easily comprehensible & non-controversial
2. on the other hand, I miss A LOT of practical issues when naming was some sort of an issue, e.g., how to name "connecting" tables in many:many relationships; such issues do happen all the time & some guidance here would be more than appreciated - especially for starters
3. personally, I think that the main issues with naming are caused by semantics - the only advice the book presents here is "try Domain Driven Design" - which may be a reasonable direction (Ubiquitous Language!), but DDD is very ethereal itself, so I'd expect some more practical guidance.

Good stuff, but slightly "oversold" (overpromised).

[Bugzmanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a long blog post shaped as a book. Overall pretty pragmatic and prescriptive, but also very subjective and surface level. While I pretty much agree with most of it, I kept thinking "damn there is way more depth to this" or "this requires way more caveats".

Things I liked the most:
- mentioning that different languages and ecosystems have different conventions (the book mostly advocates for pythonic style)
- nice jab about java people writing enterprise java in any language they try.

For those who are interested in topic, following posts might be entertaining:
https://optimal-codestyle.github.io/
https://www.linguistic-antipatterns.com
https://www.pathsensitive.com/2022/03...

[Héctor Iván Patricio Moreno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es una muy buena introducción a cómo crear nombres de identificadores que sean útiles, además de la importancia de hacerlos.

Creo que no estoy de acuerdo con algunos de ellos, porque, como todo en el desarrollo de software actualmente, creo que están sujetas a la experiencia de los que están dando el consejo. A pesar de eso, creo que da muy buenos argumentos para poner atención al nombrado de cosas e intenta soportar con buenos razonamientos y ejemplos las cosas que propone.

Al ser una lectura tan corta, la recomendaría a todos los desarrolladores de software que quieran escribir buenos programas.

[Ravi Sinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, sweet, and complete. Nice to have a centralized coverage of this ever important topic. Took off one star because it's not all that original, and borrows heavily from other classics in the literature such as Code Complete, Clean Code, Refactoring, the Pragmatic Programmer, and the like. Does provide some good examples and unified guidelines though, so I appreciate the effort.

[Daniel]

similar, but different

being spared of coming up with names

Tailwind takes the naming away in most of the cases

[Jakub · Rating 3 out of 5]

A blogpost that ended as 100page long book. It’s amazing how much we can write about something that could and should not be extended to that length.

I agree with what’s is said in the book, mostly, hance 3 starts. I think that making this more concise would greatly benefit a book/blog post.

[Timon Ruban · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel that only people that already think naming is important will read this book and this book holds no surprises or insights for people that already think naming is important. Preaching to the choir.

[Joe Michalak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather straightforward, if not too thorough, review of best practices for naming things while coding. Great on general philosophy, but short on practical steps as the rules of the language and codebase will ultimately provide some influence.

[Juan Pedrajas Mendoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Información útil condensada y justificada con un enfoque extremadamente ingenieril. Trata un tema impresionante impactante de fotma accionable. Muy recomendado a cualquier ingeniero que trabaje con software.

[Thongchai Kolyutsakul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most stuff are things I already know. And lots of filler sentences. There are good principles, but lack in depth examples. For example, it mentioned calling out “courteously” when someone uses a wrong naming. But I’m curious what exactly is considered courteous.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review at https://stuff.graves.cl/posts/2023-07...

[Guillermo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small but basic booklet for a difficult subject. Not a difficult read, but a must for any would be or experienced programmer.

[Yadiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a quick read, yet insightful and straightforward. Highly recommended, especially if you're new to software engineering.

[Rajasuba Subramanian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The core principles emphasized in this book are:

- Communicate Clearly and Concisely
- Maintain Consistency
- Prioritize Understandability

5/5, thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

[Todd Sandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read, naming things in programming is an important thing for a developer to learn how to do, given it's a very short book, I would recommend it to anyone who is interested. A fun book to read

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes. Names are hard, I could read this 10 times and still learn something new