Topic 44
Naming Things

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

Confucius

What's in a name? When we're programming, the answer is “everything!”

We create names for applications, subsystems, modules, functions, variables—we're constantly creating new things and bestowing names on them. And those names are very, very important, because they reveal a lot about your intent and belief.

We believe that things should be named according to the role they play in your code. This means that, whenever you create something, you need to pause and think “what is my motivation to create this?”

This is a powerful question, because it takes you out of the immediate problem-solving mindset and makes you look at the bigger picture. When ...

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