So I'd view "descriptive names" as a separate discussion. The point with the analogy is not how you name them, but whether you identify them at all. I really d

So I'd view "descriptive names" as a separate discussion. The point with the analogy is not how you name them, but whether you identify them at all. I really don't care about the name of the machine that died while running my distributed service; I shouldn't ever have to know it. It should automatically be culled and replaced. The person working in a datacenter really does care about the name of the rack that is faulty; they have to find and replace it. That rack can be named "RM22-R3-5", a super descriptive identifier, or "Tennyson", because the whole room is Elizabethan authors and poets; point is, he DOES need to identify it. The whole cattle vs pets is about identification and uniqueness, not about whether the identity is self-descriptive or not.