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I went to Jameco and just grabbed the name of a part at random, "Phototransistor IR Chip Silicon NPN Transistor 2-Pin T-1". I'm curious, how do you propose tha

I went to Jameco and just grabbed the name of a part at random, "Phototransistor IR Chip Silicon NPN Transistor 2-Pin T-1". I'm curious, how do you propose that part be named? I mean, sure, you can call it part #112176. That's a name with fewer words. The part number is preferable for, say, ordering from a catalog. But when actually designing a device that uses that part? Well, at some point, I need to know what it is. And what it is is a "Phototransistor IR Chip Silicon NPN Transistor 2-Pin T-1". Sometimes in engineering you just need some really specific thing, and it makes perfect sense for a really specific thing to have a really specific name. I'm genuinely curious: what is the argument behind your conjecture that nothing should exist that takes so many words to name? Should that phototransistor not exist?

famousactress 13y ago
Ouch. Great point. I'll make an attempt here, but understand that you have me on my heels :) If I look around my office I see lots of things that I could name with that many words, because they're composed of a number of really important properties. The reason they're composed of all of those properties is to serve some purpose, and their name tends to reflect that purpose. So I guess I'd ask if all of the properties in that part name reflect some holistic idea and suggest a name based on that. But I know I'm probably wrong. The people who make that part may not really know why all those properties are together.. in as much as they have customers that use it for lots of different things. It'll probably end up in things that haven't been invented yet, who knows. Or maybe we could come up with a holistic name, but because it was unspecific we wouldn't know exactly what it did, and anyone about to purchase that part would have to read the spec-sheet (source code, to briefly exit our analogy). Let's say we built a device that included that thing. What would we call it when traversing the schematics? We'd probably call it the phototransistor, because everything else is detailed enough to be 'source code'. You caught me being hyperbolic, though. You're right. Some things deserve complicated names, I still definitely don't think any of those things are classes in Spring though. That shit's cray.
- humbledrone 13y ago
  Yeah, I definitely don't think all long names are justified. I'm a huge fan of simplicity, and prefer short, simple, and direct code. With regards to Spring, especially, I do tend to agree that some of the very long class names are that way just due to incidental complexity, rather than complexity innate to the problem space itself.
satyap 13y ago
"Phototransistor IR Chip Silicon NPN Transistor 2-Pin T-1" is a great name for a part that a human somewhere needs to read and understand what it's for. If that were a piece of Computer code it might be better off being named: Silicon::Chip::Transistor::NPN::Photo::IR and then 2-pin and T-1 might be properties on it. The key word here might be "namespacing". Or it might be something else.

famousactress 13y ago

Ouch. Great point. I'll make an attempt here, but understand that you have me on my heels :) If I look around my office I see lots of things that I could name with that many words, because they're composed of a number of really important properties. The reason they're composed of all of those properties is to serve some purpose, and their name tends to reflect that purpose. So I guess I'd ask if all of the properties in that part name reflect some holistic idea and suggest a name based on that. But I know I'm probably wrong. The people who make that part may not really know why all those properties are together.. in as much as they have customers that use it for lots of different things. It'll probably end up in things that haven't been invented yet, who knows. Or maybe we could come up with a holistic name, but because it was unspecific we wouldn't know exactly what it did, and anyone about to purchase that part would have to read the spec-sheet (source code, to briefly exit our analogy). Let's say we built a device that included that thing. What would we call it when traversing the schematics? We'd probably call it the phototransistor, because everything else is detailed enough to be 'source code'. You caught me being hyperbolic, though. You're right. Some things deserve complicated names, I still definitely don't think any of those things are classes in Spring though. That shit's cray.

humbledrone 13y ago
Yeah, I definitely don't think all long names are justified. I'm a huge fan of simplicity, and prefer short, simple, and direct code. With regards to Spring, especially, I do tend to agree that some of the very long class names are that way just due to incidental complexity, rather than complexity innate to the problem space itself.

satyap 13y ago

"Phototransistor IR Chip Silicon NPN Transistor 2-Pin T-1" is a great name for a part that a human somewhere needs to read and understand what it's for. If that were a piece of Computer code it might be better off being named: Silicon::Chip::Transistor::NPN::Photo::IR and then 2-pin and T-1 might be properties on it. The key word here might be "namespacing". Or it might be something else.