Oh, I don’t know, meaning? Connotation? Affordance? Ahh, but those are trivial things.

I came across a real gem today in the code at work. Now, developers are a geeky, quirky sort and name things all different ways. I don’t like to be a code nazi, so, hey, if it generally indicates what it does, great, whatever.

The component in question is a front end web component. So the name not only is useful to programmers to understand what it does, it’s also visible to the customer and search engines. So a meaningful name “affords” what it really does to both customers and search engines.

The component helps you if you forgot your login id, called an AAdvantage number. What might you call it? forgotAAdvantageNumber? lookupAAdvantageNumber? even something generic like findLoginId?

No. LoginAAdvantage. That’s what it and all it’s related components are called. It doesn’t log you in. It’s not directly related to login, only indirectly due to the fact you’re looking up your login id.

So now I’m going to code the login component and I’m going to call it something clever like, oh, I don’t know, Login? But now in the same location I’ll have “Login” and “LoginAAdvantage”. Confusing to everyone. Sheesh.

Being the pain in the ass that I often can be around here at work when it comes to doing things right, I’m going to incorporate into my project a name change to the existing component.