That time with the weird names…
So, I was thinking about names the other day. How we label stuff. Reminded me of this one time, way back, on a project. Man, what a mess that was.
We inherited this piece of code, right? Nobody who wrote it was around anymore. Classic situation. And digging through it was… something else. The variable names, jeez. It was like someone just typed whatever popped into their head.
I remember finding these variables, I think they were for tracking user profiles or something like that. And they were named stuff like… well, let’s just say they weren’t exactly professional. I specifically recall seeing things like ‘stud_profile’ and ‘girl_data’ scattered around. Seriously. Not kidding.
My first thought was, “What the heck were they thinking?” It wasn’t just unprofessional, it was confusing. What did ‘stud_profile’ even mean in this context? Was it a user type? A status? And ‘girl_data’? Same problem. It told you nothing useful about the data itself.
So, the task fell to us, the new guys, to clean it up. It wasn’t fun.
- First, we had to figure out what these variables actually did. That meant hours of tracing code, looking at how the data was used.
- Then, we had to come up with sensible names. Something clear, something that actually described the data. Like ‘user_profile_active’ or ‘customer_demographics_gender’. You know, normal stuff.
- Finally, the big refactor. Going through hundreds, maybe thousands of lines of code, carefully replacing the old, weird names with the new ones. One typo, and boom, something breaks. Stressful stuff.
It took ages. Longer than it should have. All because someone, years ago, thought it was okay to use silly, inappropriate names. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t funny. It just created a headache for everyone who came after.
Lesson learned, though. Name things properly from the start. Be clear. Be professional. Don’t try to be edgy or funny with variable names. Future you, or future someone else, will thank you for not making them decipher nonsense like ‘stud_profile’. Just stick to the basics, makes life easier for everyone involved.
