Naming is Hard

There’s a quote in Computer Science – “There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.”  Well, naming things is hard for everyone.

Everyone brings to the table a history of accumulated connotations and associations such that the meaning of everything is different to each and every one of us.  Finding the right word for something new is ever more challenging in some ways. We intuitively gain a sense of meaning of words even if we have never heard them before in many cases.. this requires deliberate thinking.

In software, naming variables well can be the difference between sensible readable self-documenting code or unintelligible write-once junk.

Likewise naming things in the real-world is also difficult, the right name really does make an impact.  The right company name will make a difference, the wrong name will make everything harder.