Naming is Impossibly Hard

Naming is a hard problem--one of the two hard things in computer science. I like to say that naming is impossibly hard. It suggests that there is no perfectly correct name. I think this mindset helps me to be more pragmatic when naming things. Instead of holding out for the perfect name, I settle for a better name. Though not necessarily forever. When I return older and hopefully wiser, I may again consider the challenge of finding a better name.

I don't know how I came to like this phrasing. As I write this, Google only has three hits for this exact phrase. The first is by me in this GitHub comment, and the third is the same comment on a copy of GitHub. The second is by Jeff Atwood in this Stack Exchange comment that predates me by a decade. I think I am in good company.


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