Naming Things
The Hardest Problem in Software Engineering
Tom Benner
Write understandable software
Naming is one of the most frequently-used, visible, and timeless skills in software engineering, but it's poorly understood and poorly executed.
We're writing a book about how to name things well.
Read the book to learn how to:
- Make your code and products understandable to multiple audiences
- Reduce time wasted explaining concepts to colleagues and users
- Make you, your colleagues, and your users happier and more effective
Learn a valuable, lifelong skill that few engineers have
Naming things requires communicating complex concepts clearly and concisely. Few engineers do this well, leading to software that is needlessly confusing.
By learning simple naming principles, you can name things more quickly, confidently, and effectively.
Learn how to:
- Methodically find the best name for a concept
- Help yourself and your colleagues understand code more quickly
- Make concepts immediately understandable
- Effectively rename poorly-chosen names
Read more about the book in the "Why we need a book about naming things" blog post.
Quotes by Experts
Your code is for a human first and a computer second. Humans need good names.
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
Want to be a beta reader?
To review drafts of the book as a beta reader, please fill out this form.