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tambourine_man

Thanks for this link: http://namingschemes.com

It's one of the two hard problems, you know. Help is always appreciated.

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html

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Wait a minute, I always thought the two hard things were cache invalidation, naming things and off by one errors.

I got burned in a tech interview with off-by-one errors. I had signed into a shared editor to do some simple practice stuff for the interviewer.

He noted the off-by-one errors as a concern.

I was thinking: this is untested, unreviewed, 2-minute code that shows I can at least do some sort of problem solving. I'm nervous, don't know you, kinda worried about the tone of this interview and you're worried about off-by-one errors.

Kinda glad I didn't get that one. Wish I'd just hung up on the guy.

I feel for both you and him.

The problem with getting praised a lot for being smart is that you then feel obliged to say smart-sounding things often, and being critical is an easy way to sound smart. It's even worse if you're hired to be smart. So the guy, if he wasn't a total tool, was probably thinking: I wish I could just be coding, but instead I'm supposed to interview a bunch of people in a way that guarantees it will be awkward. And shit, I just got nervous and said something that sounds insulting. I wish I could just hang up.

In the "expanded" set, there are technically three hard things - you forgot dealing with February 29th.

Daylight savings time... I mean unless you do things like a human, that is in UTC. Otherwise, be prepared for having at least one hour a year when your software does not work.

No, those are the four hard things.

condition. I'm pretty sure the fifth is a race

Naw, it's probably graceful expansion. Or maybe that is 6th?

Wow, that's interesting. Had a similar thought not too long ago about applying a naming scheme to identifiers in code. Not like this or Hungarian Notation, but more like a controlled vocabulary variables with the same meaning use the same name across your codebase. So no more using "price" here and "amount" there. That would directly address the second hard thing.

In the aerospace industry there is something called "Simplified Technical English"[1]. Maybe something like that already exists for your domain as well?

From the linked Wikipedia article:

    The approved words can only be used according to their specified meaning. For 
    example, the word "close" can only be used in one of two meanings:

    - To move together, or to move to a position that stops or prevents materials 
      from going in or out
    - To operate a circuit breaker to make an electrical circuit

    The verb can express close a door or close a circuit, but cannot be used in 
    other senses (for example to close the meeting or to close a business).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English

U.S. submarines do a similar thing. There is a specific doctrine for how interior communications are performed, down to the level of always using "shut" instead of "close" (which can be confused with "blow"), referring to compartments and equipment using precise wording and pronunciation, etc.

Similarly I heard recently that air traffic controllers are never allowed to use the word "takeoff" unless its in the context of clearing an aircraft to do so.

I do consulting, so I don't work in a particular domain. There's usually a mix of coporate lingo and industry lingo. but the developers don't come in with familiarity with either so it ends up a being all over the place.

Given that thought, you'll likely enjoy Eric Evans' "Domain Driven Design". I love that book: https://www.google.com/search?q=domain-driven+design

I like the suggestion on the first link that these naming schemes should be used for kids. An amusing site :)

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