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Comment by doctor_eval | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but surely there is a directory somewhere that explains this?

I mean - the problem is not the number of names but the number of services. A new hire still isn't going to be able to work out what a service does just based on the name, regardless of how whimsical or apt it is.

"policy-engine" might seem to be a good name for a service, but it's only one level below "kevin" in terms of opaqueness, especially when there are probably several policy related services.

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>Yeah but surely there is a directory somewhere that explains this?

No, there's 5 different directories in 3 different formats compiled across the last 8 years representing the state of 80% of terms at the time it was last updated, half of which disagree with another version.

I gotta say, I think that's actually just bad technical management, so I suppose it's probably common. Although I will admit Conway's law here.

Nevertheless, the same phenomenon that leads to multiple directories will also mean that supposedly "descriptive" names, will not be.

I can confirm this

"policy-engine" is an example of a name that is neither cute nor descriptive

But that's my point. You start writing a new policy engine, and you think the name is obviously descriptive. But in 12 months time, it's not so obvious any more, and also you probably have 3 different policy engines for different use cases.

Ok but the image-optimization-engine that Carl wrote still seems descriptive to me those same 12 months later.

So I think policy-engine might have seemed descriptive but it just wasn't whereas image-optimization-engine was descriptive.

At least until it also starts converting gifs to webm, and soon other formats like mp4, and since it's being used for video it needs subtitle support in various languages.

It should be pretty apparent even from the start that that isn't a descriptive name.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

It's an example of descriptive but how being terse, descriptive, and unique is quite difficult.

You mean a generic policy-engine? One that reads code-as-configuration from a database, executes arbitrary I/O, and gives back a result?

Very few times somebody starts something like this. And yes, they do have cute names, because they don't have any short identification.

A directory does wonders. Make it hierarchical too. That way different zones can have different values.

It can point "policy-engine" to which host runs it. Or, even better, make it resolve the IP address directly!

Directories somewhere that pedagoically explain all the codenames, nah that doesn't necessarily exist in the company until it grows larger. It might just be a quagmire for new hires in a growing company.

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