Use professional and meaningful names

TL;DR: Don't be informal or offensive

Problems

• Readability

• Unprofessional work

Solutions

1. Choose good and professional names.

Context

Our profession has a creative side.

Sometimes we get bored and try to be funny.

Sample Code

Wrong

function erradicateAndMurderAllCustomers();

//unprofessional and offensive

Right

function deleteAllCustomers();

//more declarative and professional

Detection

[X] SemiAutomatic

We can have a list of forbidden words.

We can also check them in code reviews.

Names are contextual, so it would be a difficult task for an automatic linter.

Naming conventions should be generic and should not include cultural jargon.

Tags

• Naming

Conclusion

Be professional in the way you name things in your code.

Don't be try to be a comedian by giving a variable a silly name.

You should write production code so future software developers (even you) should easily understand.

Relations

More Info

• What is in a name

Credits

Photo by Stewart Munro on Unsplash

---

This ‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.

Linus Torvalds

---

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.