4 ms·
100%. I was at a company and they kept renaming the internal name to match the marketing name. We had 3 names for some older tech and 2 names for the less than
by kevincox 4y ago
100%. I was at a company and they kept renaming the internal name to match the marketing name. We had 3 names for some older tech and 2 names for the less than a year old service. I strongly recommended that we should adopt the original name as a "codename" and use it for code and internal technical documents.
Marketing should absolutely have full control over the user visible name. But technology has different needs where a "codename" is a much better match. Having two names is generally only a tiny bit confusing.
I have also yet to see a codebase rename that completes before the product name changes again. You always just end up with a confusing slew of N names in the codebase if you try to rename.
- pphysch 4y agoIt seems that most business objects should have all of the following: 1) A memory-friendly, indexed, unique, immutable ID (e.g. BIGINT or GUID). 2) A human-friendly unique immutable codename/slug. 3) A human-friendly mutable marketing/display name. 1 & 2 could be combined in some cases
- dlivingston 4y agoRelated-ish, but Apple's macOS APIs are peppered with references to NeXTSTEP. I find this charming. For example, NSView (spelled out - NextStepView). https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsview https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsview
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoNeXTStep used "NX" prefixes, and its successor, OpenStep, used the prefix "NS". "NX" stood for "NeXT", "NS" stood for "NeXT and Sun". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973609
- dlivingston 4y agoThe comments on your linked post seem to indicate that NS referring to "NeXT & Sun" is highly controversial.
- spfzero 4y agoIIRC the NS prefix was in use long before there were any dealings with Sun. There was software development going on at NeXT before they had the name for the OS ("NeXTStep"). So, NX for NeXT, NS for NeXTStep.