Use long names

Unfortunately, we have been used to the fact that a name has nothing to do with the object it names. John, Mary, and Steve say almost nothing about the people it names. Maybe just that they all speak English. We don’t know if the are tall or short if they are good with computers or know how to paint or play the piano.

Of course, the reason for that is that their parents had no idea how would their kids behave when they would grow up.

But, fortunately, it is different when we write the code. When we create an element of our code, it does not matter if it is a constant, variable, method or a class, we know for sure what it will be used for. So we are in a better position to choose a name. And even if we are wrong and the purpose of the element will evolve, we can change the name anytime. Most of the modern IDE-s have a refactoring option that can change a name across the project.

Another great feature the IDE-s of today have is that they prepopulate the names. You start typing a couple of letters and they give you a dropdown to select the best options for the specific context. So we don’t really type the whole names anymore.

And because of this, there is no reason to save the space and use short names. We can use names as long as we want if they are useful.

Let’s see few examples:

age -> userAge
error -> connectionErrorCode
name -> dogName
User -> UserView
Login -> LoginViewController
message -> errorMessageAfterLogin

The advantage is obvious. So go crazy!