6 ms·

>$AN_ENGINEER_TOOK_A_MYTHOLOGY_CLASS Shit, I wish.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I giggled at that, because I felt seen. I took an overview of western literature class in college which included Obie’s Metamorphosis, and it’s had a severe negative impact on my ability to name services. Edit: I obviously meant Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but autocorrect got me. I’m leaving it, because that’s hilarious.
- bigdict 6y ago
  > Obie's Metamorphosis real name, no gimmicks
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Yay, autocorrect!
- ben509 6y ago
  As naming schemes go, though, my preference ordering is still mythology > Middle Earth > Harry Potter > dropping the last vowel.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > Obie's Metamorphosis Ovid's Metamorphoses?
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Autocorrect comes for us all in the end.
alphast0rm 6y ago
One of my last teams used gods from Greek mythology (e.g. Apollo [1], Ares [2]), and another nearby team used Pokemon names. Lots of folks started using similar naming conventions and eventually a clear naming manifesto was sent to all engineers to discourage this practice for new services. It's much easier to discuss and reason about complex systems when the names are self-explanatory, especially when you get to 100s or 1000s of names. [1] https://www.memsql.com/blog/case-study-scalable-sql-database-uber/ https://www.memsql.com/blog/case-study-scalable-sql-database... [2] https://eng.uber.com/aresdb/ https://eng.uber.com/aresdb/
- kixiQu 6y ago
  I work at a very large tech company and my experience with names there leads me to disagree. * It is often most critical to differentiate between things that have similar functions. The relevant distinctions will not be clear by the time of naming (i.e., this is the part that used to manage the whole X but now just responds to callers, this is the part that was separated out from the old X for scaling, this is the old X backend, this is the older backend that runs for the old platform Xes only...). * The same name may seem to make sense to people for very, very different things. (Viz. how many technical meanings "migration" has) If you have to namespace your names to get over this, Org Product Name starts getting clunky enough it will be called something different in practice anyway. In sum, I would say that it's much easier to discuss and reason about complex systems made up of parts with clear divisions of responsibility, and I'm sure that everything tends to be easier when those divisions have been static enough over time such that the names can still correspond to responsibilities. However, I will take every single Pokemon name in existence over the confusion caused by names that try to describe what services do and are inaccurate.
- YarickR2 6y ago
  Using Simpsons as an inspiration to server roles naming scheme; they had lisa-[xxyy], bart-[xxyy] etc. ICQ , circa AOL times.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    I currently maintain a product that is Father Ted-based. Network devices are labeled FatherJack (fastest), FatherTed (baseline), FatherDoogle (slowest). Storage is on CraggyIsland.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    We used WWII-era warships. Keep in mind this was at a Navy contractor. Total PITA by the way. App-Prod-DB-001, App-QA-007 or DB-Bak-003 tells me what the server does, and what sort of tier (Prod, Test/QA, Dev, misc.) and a couple of other details about just looking at it. Folks reading this post could probably make some guesses just by the names. Meanwhile, what the hell do servers Leonidas and Hephaestus do? Both of em crashed -- how much should I be panicking about that?
thedevelopnik 6y ago
Also my favorite part.

I giggled at that, because I felt seen. I took an overview of western literature class in college which included Obie’s Metamorphosis, and it’s had a severe negative impact on my ability to name services. Edit: I obviously meant Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but autocorrect got me. I’m leaving it, because that’s hilarious.

bigdict 6y ago
> Obie's Metamorphosis real name, no gimmicks
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Yay, autocorrect!
ben509 6y ago
As naming schemes go, though, my preference ordering is still mythology > Middle Earth > Harry Potter > dropping the last vowel.
ebg13 6y ago
> Obie's Metamorphosis Ovid's Metamorphoses?
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Autocorrect comes for us all in the end.

alphast0rm 6y ago

One of my last teams used gods from Greek mythology (e.g. Apollo [1], Ares [2]), and another nearby team used Pokemon names. Lots of folks started using similar naming conventions and eventually a clear naming manifesto was sent to all engineers to discourage this practice for new services. It's much easier to discuss and reason about complex systems when the names are self-explanatory, especially when you get to 100s or 1000s of names. [1] https://www.memsql.com/blog/case-study-scalable-sql-database-uber/ https://www.memsql.com/blog/case-study-scalable-sql-database... [2] https://eng.uber.com/aresdb/ https://eng.uber.com/aresdb/

kixiQu 6y ago
I work at a very large tech company and my experience with names there leads me to disagree. * It is often most critical to differentiate between things that have similar functions. The relevant distinctions will not be clear by the time of naming (i.e., this is the part that used to manage the whole X but now just responds to callers, this is the part that was separated out from the old X for scaling, this is the old X backend, this is the older backend that runs for the old platform Xes only...). * The same name may seem to make sense to people for very, very different things. (Viz. how many technical meanings "migration" has) If you have to namespace your names to get over this, Org Product Name starts getting clunky enough it will be called something different in practice anyway. In sum, I would say that it's much easier to discuss and reason about complex systems made up of parts with clear divisions of responsibility, and I'm sure that everything tends to be easier when those divisions have been static enough over time such that the names can still correspond to responsibilities. However, I will take every single Pokemon name in existence over the confusion caused by names that try to describe what services do and are inaccurate.
YarickR2 6y ago
Using Simpsons as an inspiration to server roles naming scheme; they had lisa-[xxyy], bart-[xxyy] etc. ICQ , circa AOL times.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I currently maintain a product that is Father Ted-based. Network devices are labeled FatherJack (fastest), FatherTed (baseline), FatherDoogle (slowest). Storage is on CraggyIsland.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  We used WWII-era warships. Keep in mind this was at a Navy contractor. Total PITA by the way. App-Prod-DB-001, App-QA-007 or DB-Bak-003 tells me what the server does, and what sort of tier (Prod, Test/QA, Dev, misc.) and a couple of other details about just looking at it. Folks reading this post could probably make some guesses just by the names. Meanwhile, what the hell do servers Leonidas and Hephaestus do? Both of em crashed -- how much should I be panicking about that?

thedevelopnik 6y ago

Also my favorite part.