(DRAFT) Naming of Things

Writing about why Emacs is hard for new users, I can’t help but think back to how important it is to name things well. This is not the first time I tried to write about this idea. I don’t think I’ve ever done a great job at it.

The thing is, naming things is really the most important way we capture ideas. Every single word we learn is an idea that has been captured and named. Let’s set aside that an idea like “cow” may mean different things to different people – that is a discussion to have elsewhere. The point I’m making is that you have now named some thing “cow” and you can use it in your thought process. Now you can in your mind imagine what a cow might when it is surrounded by predators. You might imagine what a cow might do in a crowd of people. You might imagine how that cow might behave differently based on how you and other people behave around it. You can do this because you have given a useful definition to the word “cow”. In a similar vein, useful definitions and words can help you think more clearly and hopefully, make better decisions.

This is an article I hope to keep working on. I hope to evetually yank the word “DRAFT” out of the title.

TODO

Unit, integration, and BDD tests

Why we need to usefully name them and why a lack of standardization is a terrible thing to programmers.

Real life example: There is a concept of dev test at Telesign that is distinct from unit test. What is i?ty

REST API

Because noone knows what this is when they about it.