A useful way to think about it is that names are basically comments, but only names can be looked up by an IDE. When looking for a frobnicator I can find it tri

A useful way to think about it is that names are basically comments, but only names can be looked up by an IDE. When looking for a frobnicator I can find it trivially if there is something named "frobnicator" or anything similar. If there is a docstring mentioning frobnication (maybe with some "alternative" spelling or other word form like a verb when I'm looking for the noun), on the other hand, that's much harder to find. And once I find it, I still have to locate the actual frobnicator somewhere near the comment. Even this is the ideal case, where only one comment mentions frobnication. What if it's a common word? Now the chance of finding the right thing in a reasonable time goes way down if it's not named properly.