names
A renaming of the already named
A crumpled drawing
Names vs. The Nothing
My name
Take your names with you
No Smoking
Port furniture
All the miscellaneous fittings and fixtures on wharves and piers and elsewhere in nautical neighborhoods are known by the charming term port furniture.
On the Winds
An Article by Justin E. H. SmithOn the Situations and Names of the Winds is the title of a fragment of a pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, most likely written by a later author of the Peripatetic school. The two-page work identifies and briefly describes the names not just of the four anemoi, but gives a wind-name to each of the twelve points of the so-called “wind-rose”, slightly less poetically the “compass rose”, which is the figure seen on classical nautical charts and maps that shows the cardinal points as well as points intermediate.
...In both agricultural and maritime settings, the names of the winds were at once practical and phenomenologically basic: to step outside and to feel them was to know how things were in the most basic sense, to “know which way the wind is blowing”, as we still vestigially say, and to find the language to speak of it.
...If I were ever permitted to teach a course on the philosophy of wind, I would begin with the questions: How did the winds lose their names? And what does it mean for us to live in a world of nameless winds? I step outside and I feel a gust. “That’s wind,” I think to myself, and I have nothing more to add beyond that. I don’t know the winds.
The Genius of Apple's Name
An Article by Shawn WangIt's easy to have strong opinions about stuff only developers see since user validation is just asking people like yourself. It's much harder to name something consumer facing. Here are some useful rules I gleaned from Apple:
- Two syllables max
- Familiar English word - literal 5 year olds can spell and pronounce it right
- Starts with A - useful for alphabetical sort. Amazon did this too
- Name leads to easy logo/swag/branding ideas
- Evoke aspirational qualities - knowledge, health, nature
Picking better names for variables, functions, and projects
An Article by Tom MacWright- Avoid weasel words
- Follow patterns religiously
- Don’t cheap out on characters
- Call things the same thing
- Don’t name internal projects
- When things change, change their names
Deadlines are bullshit
In software development deadlines are a necessary evil. It is important to understand when they are necessary, and it is important to understand why they are evil.
- External vs. internal deadlines
- Why are internal deadlines evil?
- Engineers who love their work
External vs. internal deadlines
When are deadlines necessary?
- Contractual obligations
- Technical liabilities (e.g., dependency EOL)
- Compliance, government, investors, and other external stakeholders
What do all of these deadlines have in common? They are all important. They are all deadlines that cannot be missed. They are all external.
When are deadlines evil?
- Your manager says you have a deadline
- Your software development methodology says you have deadlines
What do all of these deadlines have in common? None of them are important. They are arbitrary. They are all internal. They are all bullshit.
Why are internal deadlines evil?
- Estimation: When estimating engineering work a substantial time investment is required by an engineer in order to get an accurate estimate.
- Misaligned Incentives: There is an incentive to lie and give estimates much longer than the feature is truly expected to take.
- Low Morale: Deadlines are likely to be missed often. Repeated failure has a cost to the morale of the team.
- Micromanagement: Deadlines are wielded by middle managers as a whip to harass and annoy engineers working on features.
- High Stress: When engineers feel the pressure of other stakeholders holding deadlines over their heads it creates an environment of high stress.
- High Turnover: On teams with high turnover rates the best engineers have an easy time finding new work and leave quickly, the worst engineers have a difficult time finding work and remain. This selects for a lower quality team over time.
Engineers who love their work
The resolution is simple. Never have internal deadlines. Operate on a prioritized and ordered list of features. Estimate only when necessary to prioritize and do so in a t-shirt sizing way. Trust your engineers and they will begin to love their work. Engineers who love their work are happy and productive.