4 ms·

There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things.

• cjslep 8y ago
  > There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors. That's how I learned the phrase.
  • netingle 8y ago
    And Loki has all three ;-)
• PavlovsCat 8y ago
  Alternate between vowels and consonants, look for the resulting string in various search engines, the first one that gets no results is the new name. Keep track of all items (like "main page", "search results for $blah") that component items (like "body of post 234", "avatar of user 3540") are used in, and when a component item changes, invalidate its cache and that of all items it was used in.
  • kbenson 8y ago
    > Alternate between vowels and consonants, look for the resulting string in various search engines, the first one that gets no results is the new name. I'm pretty sure the quote was originally talking about function, variable and data structure naming, in which Google may or may not be help. Really, I've always found naming problems in that are more to do with correctly predicting the future, since the most egregious problems I encounter are when something that used to be named at least passably has changed over time to be very confusingly, if not outright misleadingly, named.
    • PavlovsCat 8y ago
      If you don't know what to name a variable, name it something like _whatisthisreplacemelater_ so if you ever come up with a good name, you can easily replace it. What could go wrong, right? Just an easy fix for later today..
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• frozenice 8y ago
  > There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things. There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.