A question about naming
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If your application/library/class/function has developed out of scope and can no longer be considered having the right name, when is it ok to rename it?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
I'm going with April 1st, or a Friday 13th. Conveniently, 2015 has three of those. If it's C++, go ahead and rename it and let the compiler puke all over everyone. Then accuse them of not following standards if they complain. ... or #define it to a MessageBoxA() call. ;P
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Jörgen Andersson wrote:
I promise to not touch fix your code.
So close, but you blew it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
If I promised that, I'd probably blow it anyway.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Any organization is like a tree full of monkeys. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.
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If your application/library/class/function has developed out of scope and can no longer be considered having the right name, when is it ok to rename it?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
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Rename it, but leave a wrapper sitting there that calls the newly renamed function with the old name, in case someone is still using the old name. Remove the old name from documentation. ;-)
Quad skating his way through the world since the early 80's... Booger Mobile - My bright green 1964 Ford Falcon - check out the blog here!! | If you feel generous - make a donation to Camp Quality!!
+1
Gus Gustafson
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If your application/library/class/function has developed out of scope and can no longer be considered having the right name, when is it ok to rename it?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
That's not one question - it's four. Methods and classes can be renamed safely as long as you continue to support the old names (be sure to deprecate them using [Obsolete]) for n releases per your SLA. Renaming assembly and file names can wreak havoc. Do this only if absolutely necessary. Renaming an app requires sales, marketing and end-user support to get involved and is the most expensive option. Do this only if your bottom line depends on it. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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If your application/library/class/function has developed out of scope and can no longer be considered having the right name, when is it ok to rename it?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
gesh people, don't you know. You always start all programs with Project1 and all variables are var1, var2 etc... text boxes txt1 txt2 txt3 etc.. Got to save keystrokes here. Short people short. Seriously though. Worked with a programmer many many years ago that named everything that way. Oh my goodness her code was horrible. Anyway. Rename as soon as possible but try to keep it as general as possible. Hard balancing act to follow. I actually have a reporting project that I wasn't 'allowed' to know the name of when I started coding it. I named it DrillInSpecialReports. Unfortunately it was too general and everyone on the team has put all their special reports in that project and hung them all off each other. It is a beast now. But we know where to look for anything that is a special report.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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gesh people, don't you know. You always start all programs with Project1 and all variables are var1, var2 etc... text boxes txt1 txt2 txt3 etc.. Got to save keystrokes here. Short people short. Seriously though. Worked with a programmer many many years ago that named everything that way. Oh my goodness her code was horrible. Anyway. Rename as soon as possible but try to keep it as general as possible. Hard balancing act to follow. I actually have a reporting project that I wasn't 'allowed' to know the name of when I started coding it. I named it DrillInSpecialReports. Unfortunately it was too general and everyone on the team has put all their special reports in that project and hung them all off each other. It is a beast now. But we know where to look for anything that is a special report.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
I've also worked with one of those people, he also didn't know there existed such a thing as repeaters. So we had a report with 72 (SeventyTwo) fields named Label1 through Label72.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello Any organization is like a tree full of monkeys. The monkeys on top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom look up and see nothing but assholes.
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I don't know about library, but if it's a class, never, you simply shouldn't if it used across several systems. You can extend it by sub-classsing and giving the child class an appropriate name.
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If your application/library/class/function has developed out of scope and can no longer be considered having the right name, when is it ok to rename it?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]
I worked at a place where one developer named all his functions after Disney characters. He would have fit in at my last job where the first thing we were taught was that "Names mean nothing, just because a function is named 'PRINT', it may not get around to doing any." Of course the initial software had been written by consultants who had no interest in communicating how the software worked.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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gesh people, don't you know. You always start all programs with Project1 and all variables are var1, var2 etc... text boxes txt1 txt2 txt3 etc.. Got to save keystrokes here. Short people short. Seriously though. Worked with a programmer many many years ago that named everything that way. Oh my goodness her code was horrible. Anyway. Rename as soon as possible but try to keep it as general as possible. Hard balancing act to follow. I actually have a reporting project that I wasn't 'allowed' to know the name of when I started coding it. I named it DrillInSpecialReports. Unfortunately it was too general and everyone on the team has put all their special reports in that project and hung them all off each other. It is a beast now. But we know where to look for anything that is a special report.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
I can relate. At my last job I had to debug a function that the parameters were (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i) and not one comment in the entire function. We were also taught names mean nothing when it came to function names. The consultants who wrote the initial program would commonly call functions that did ten different things when they were only interested in two of them and they assumed the other eight would not adversely affect the rest of the program. A coworker and I traced a subroutine down twenty-five levels like that and did not hit bottom. We quit because by that time we had no idea what the intent of the original function call was.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
