Self Describing

One of the greatest problems with software is that it can easily be disconnected.

There is a lot of code for some projects or functionality, but people can’t figure out what it was trying to do. It’s just a big jumble of nearly random instructions.

The original programmers may have mostly understood what it does and how it works, but they may not have been able to communicate that information to everyone who may be interested in leveraging their work.

A big problem is cryptic naming.

The programmers pick acronyms or short versions for their names instead of spelling out the full words. Some acronyms are well-known or mostly obvious, but most are eclectic and vague. They mean something to the programmers, but not to anyone else. A name that only a few people understand is not a good name.

That notion that spelling everything out to be readable is a waste of time is un unfortunate myth of the industry. Even if it saves you a few minutes typing, it is likely to eat hours or days of somebody else’s time.

Another problem is the misuse of terminology.

There may have been a long-established meaning for some things, but the programmers weren’t fully aware of those definitions. Instead, they use the same words, but with a slight or significant change in the meaning. Basically, they are using the words wrong. Anyone with a history will be confused or annoyed by the inappropriate usage. That would lead other people astray.

Some programming cultures went the other way.

They end up spelling everything out in full excessive detail, and it is the excess length of the names that tends to make them easily misunderstood. They throw up a wall of stuff that obscures the parts underneath. We don’t need huge extensive essays on how the code works, just as we do need something extra information besides the code itself. Finding that balance is part of mastering programming.

Stuttering is a common symptom of severe naming problems. You’ll see parent/child relationships that have the exact same names. You never need to repeat the same string twice, but it has become rather too common to see that in code or file systems. For some technologies, it is too easy to stutter, but it's always a red flag that indicates that people didn’t take the time to avoid it. It makes you wonder what other shortcuts they took as well.

Ultimately a self-describing name is one that gives all of the necessary information that a qualified person needs to get an understanding or to utilize something. There is always a target audience, but it is usually far larger than most programmers are willing to admit.

If you put your code in front of another programmer and they don’t get it, or they make very invalid assumptions about what it does, it is likely a naming problem. You can’t get help from others if they don’t understand what you are trying to do, and due to its complexity, serious programming has evolved into needing teams of people to work on it rather than just individuals.

Modern-day programming is slogging through a rather ugly mess of weird syntax, inconsistencies, awkwardness, confusion, and bugs galore. People used to take the time to make sure their work was clean and consistent, but now most of it is just ugly and half-baked, an annoyance to use. Wherever possible, we should try to avoid creating or using bad technologies, they do not make the world a better place.