3 ms·

Nice theory. In practice all this does is make it harder to onboard new people. Quick test: It's your 2nd week on the job. Some core system just went down, and

by extr 4y ago

Nice theory. In practice all this does is make it harder to onboard new people. Quick test: It's your 2nd week on the job. Some core system just went down, and you've been assigned to figure out what service is causing the trouble. What makes for easier, more transparent reading of error logs, the name "ServiceRouter", or the name "Trainstation"? It's not just a matter of the name being perfectly descriptive for any and all responsibilities, in zero-context situations it can be good just to give a hint that yes, this is a service, and yes, it at one point handled routing, so it seems like an okay place to start. The more obscure the name, the longer I spend reading about some obscure same-named repository and wondering how it's related to the issue at hand. That said, I think a certain degree of whimsy is definitely acceptable (necessary?) in the workplace and should be encouraged. I can support silly names for the sake of having fun. But maybe if it's something important, foundational, try to remember it may not be as fun for someone 5 years down the line at 2AM.

doctor_eval 4y ago
Who would assign a core system failure resolution task to a newbie who's been there two weeks? Also, per the article, the problem is that "ServiceRouter" maybe isn't as obvious as you might think. The actual HTTP routing might be done by "HttpPathInspector". "ServiceRouter" is actually a non-core message router for analytics. Naming is hard.
xlii 4y ago
I've been in situation where "ServiceRouter" was also doing feature flagging so when debugging 5-year old impossible to solve issue no one looked at it (because, well, it was ServiceRouter not ServiceRouterAndFeatureFlaggerAppendage, in spirit of the article) - YMMV. Another fun story I recall happened when server technician had to replace faulty HDD in RAID array. We ensured that the serial numbers were correct in correspondence yet still technician replaced the wrong one. When we complained we got into funny argument that we should use color code to designate HDD. Serial numbers are hard to pass and easy to confuse (especially since they were next to each other). But color coding wasn't provided to us, customers - we couldn't use it even if we wanted to. Naming is hard but descriptive name doesn't guarantee correctness or helpfulness just as non-descriptive wont ease understanding or improve communication without proper directory or conceptual mapping. Does DatabaseServer-EU-259-aed6f give more information than "dumpstation" in scenario where it relates to single server wordpress blog. In the end it's still about difficulty of naming, middle ground and consistence. Ubuntu for years used letter coding with animals and it worked. MacOS uses naming scheme for releases even though iOS and iPadOS are numbered only. Some people would be confused that Windows 95 is after Windows 3.11 and before Windows 10 and Windows 11. Not sure if Docker still use cutesy auto generated names for containers but it was fun to use. Naming is hard.
ilyt 4y ago
> That makes for easier, more transparent reading of error logs, the name "ServiceRouter", or the name "Trainstation"? What service ? Routing it where? The "descriptive" here isn't describing anything useful. "OrderBaseket" is descriptive. "sso-portal" is descriptive. "ServiceRouter" just uses few related words to the job. My blog is also "serviceRouter"...

by extr 4y ago

doctor_eval 4y ago

Who would assign a core system failure resolution task to a newbie who's been there two weeks? Also, per the article, the problem is that "ServiceRouter" maybe isn't as obvious as you might think. The actual HTTP routing might be done by "HttpPathInspector". "ServiceRouter" is actually a non-core message router for analytics. Naming is hard.

xlii 4y ago

I've been in situation where "ServiceRouter" was also doing feature flagging so when debugging 5-year old impossible to solve issue no one looked at it (because, well, it was ServiceRouter not ServiceRouterAndFeatureFlaggerAppendage, in spirit of the article) - YMMV. Another fun story I recall happened when server technician had to replace faulty HDD in RAID array. We ensured that the serial numbers were correct in correspondence yet still technician replaced the wrong one. When we complained we got into funny argument that we should use color code to designate HDD. Serial numbers are hard to pass and easy to confuse (especially since they were next to each other). But color coding wasn't provided to us, customers - we couldn't use it even if we wanted to. Naming is hard but descriptive name doesn't guarantee correctness or helpfulness just as non-descriptive wont ease understanding or improve communication without proper directory or conceptual mapping. Does DatabaseServer-EU-259-aed6f give more information than "dumpstation" in scenario where it relates to single server wordpress blog. In the end it's still about difficulty of naming, middle ground and consistence. Ubuntu for years used letter coding with animals and it worked. MacOS uses naming scheme for releases even though iOS and iPadOS are numbered only. Some people would be confused that Windows 95 is after Windows 3.11 and before Windows 10 and Windows 11. Not sure if Docker still use cutesy auto generated names for containers but it was fun to use. Naming is hard.

ilyt 4y ago

> That makes for easier, more transparent reading of error logs, the name "ServiceRouter", or the name "Trainstation"? What service ? Routing it where? The "descriptive" here isn't describing anything useful. "OrderBaseket" is descriptive. "sso-portal" is descriptive. "ServiceRouter" just uses few related words to the job. My blog is also "serviceRouter"...