May 13, 2012 Tagged: naming Comments (View) Beware Homonymatic Complexity When you name a class, choose a name that’s unlikely to refer more than one thing. For example, Visitor is a bad name for a class that represents unregistered users. The issue is that Visitor is the name of a well-known pattern. Like it or not, the Gang of Four claimed this one (that’s why they’re called a gang). If you use this class name in a web app, I can guess which concept you’re referring to, but the ambiguity is unsettling. I’m not sure. The name has homonymatic complexity : it sounds too much like another thing. UnregisteredUser is a better name. It’s easy to guess what this refers to. However, notice the ambiguity is affected by the problem domain: in a voter registration app, this name would again be ambiguous. In general, choose names so colleagues can easily guess an object’s identity.
Full article: http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/22987775858/beware-homo...
When you name a class, make sure to choose something that is unlikely to refer to two different things. For example, Visit...
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