Question

I’m trying to understand the considerations people use to name classes. What are the ways in which you decide between the following.

student = Student.new(:smart)

vs simply using

student = SmartStudent.new

Edit:
I guess there is really no right or wrong answer its just the way I need to decide what I am modeling.

Answer 1

You should ask your self: does the student’s attributes make a student really different from another?

If not and if it is possible, I’d suggest you to use the first solution you proposed. Generally is simpler that deploying a hierarchy of student types (see composition vs inheritance), because if your student types grow, then your student classes may proliferate making difficult to proper handle all of them.

On the other hand, if a Smart student class has a really custom behavior, and you want to use method overriding and stuff like that to perform operations on that classes instead of checking each time the student type of that particular class, then inheritance could be an option. I would stay away from that.

You should give us more details for a correct answer. Can’t say simple yes or no to your question, because it depends on your design.

EDIT:
consider also this point: can a student have more than an attribute? If that’s the case you should definitively used the first approach, other could be impossible (or at least tricky) modeling a student type that has more than one attribute (example: smart and fat).