Good practices: Naming Things

srh@haptonstahl.org (Stephen Haptonstahl, Ph.D.) — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0400

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

Phil Karlton

Bad names create confusion. Good names:

Provide clarity to consumers about what to find inside by telling us why we have the named thing.
Provide guidance to producers about what should and should not go inside, and tell us how we create the named thing.
Are easy to use: concise, memorable, easy-to-spell, not random or disconnected from how and why we have the named thing.
Avoid “collisions” = repeating a name of something else that is not distinguishable from context.

This is not a complete guide to naming, but rather a compilation of good practices¹ that generalize what I have found useful. We’ll discuss:

Good Practices on Polimath