Question

Currently I’m working on the project that is just born. Previous developers used to name each class prepending a shorten vendor name i.e. CssMainWindow. (Css stands for Cool Software Solutions).

My question is: Shouldn’t namespaces be used here? Then names of classes become much nicer.

That is:

namespace Css {

    class MainWindow {
        //...
    };
}

What are the (ad|dis)vantages of both methods?

Answer 1

Appending a prefix makes the class name longer and it takes longer to type. That’s the only disadvantage I can think of.

Using namespaces…. well you can just put

using namespace Css;

at the beginning of your files and file origin will be lost along with that.

I guess in the end it’s up to the developer. There are 2 reasons I can think of why someone would want to identify classes:

1) For a sense of ownership. In that case, appending a prefix is, IMO, the way to go. People using your code will know it’s YOUR code :).

2) For grouping classes together – in which case a namespace makes more sense.