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Anyone else find naming classes and methods one of the most difficult part in programming?

Sometimes it seems i cant really find any name for a function i am writing, can this be because the function is not cohesive enough?

What do you do when no good name for a function comes to mind?

Answer 1

For naming functions, just avoid having simply nouns and rather name them after verbs. Some pointers:

1. Have function names that are unique visibly, e.g. don’t have validateInput() and validateUserInput() since it’s hard to say what one does over another. Also, avoid having characters that look very similar, e.g. the number 1 and lowercase ‘l’. Sometimes it makes a difference.
2. Are you working on a project with multiple people? You should spend some time going over naming conventions as well, such as if the function name should have underscores, should be camelCase, etc.
3. Hungarian notation is a bad idea; avoid doing it.
4. Think about what the function is doing. The cohesion that you mentioned in your question comes to mind. Generally, functions should do just one thing, so don’t name it constructCarAndRunCar() but rather have one function that constructs and another that runs it. If your functions are between, say 20 and 40 lines, you’re good.
5. Sometimes, and this depends on the project, you might also want to prefix your function names with the class if the class is purely procedural (only composed of functions). So if you have a class that takes care of running a simulation, name your functions sim_pauseSimulation() and sim_restartSimulation(). If your class is OOP-based, this isn’t an issue as much.
6. Don’t use the underlying data structures in the functions themselves; these should be abstracted away. Rather than having functions like addToVector() or addToArray(), have them be addToList() instead. This is especially true if these are prototypes or the data structures might change later.
7. Finally, be consistent in your naming conventions. Once you come up with a convention after some thinking, stick to it. PHP comes to mind when thinking of inconsistent function names.

Happy coding! 🙂