Of course, knowing when to use an extremely descriptive name is half of the battle. Having a good aesthetic sense as a programmer is crucial. As a general rule,

Of course, knowing when to use an extremely descriptive name is half of the battle. Having a good aesthetic sense as a programmer is crucial. As a general rule, if I can see the entire lifetime of a variable in my field of view, I'll go for short/terse variable names (loop control, temp values, etc). Or if the method name is descriptive, and the code in the method is fairly short, I won't need to repeat myself in the variable names. Good sense is key. Also, the names used in the article show a very poor aesthetic sense. Names like that are screaming out as needing a refactor. Having a condition in your method name is a code smell. Your methods (read: api) should be abstracted as discreet actions, and the code that calls it should perform control flow.