What's in a name?

I was in charge of designing a module which retrieved data from a database and passed it onto a machine learning algorithm. I was having some difficulty in naming a class in the module and decided to seek some suggestions from one of my colleague.

“What’s in a name?” he said rather stylishly. OK. So he knew something about Shakespeare’s quotes. Not impressive I thought and tried explain that (in software engineering) a name signifies the very purpose of a variable or class or a sub-routine, and as a rule names should be well thought of and carefully chosen. He interrupted me midway and said that he really did not care so much about names, including his or anyone else’s.

I was not aware then, that the moment a developer has a difficulty conjuring up a name for something; it means that the purpose of that thing is unclear. That apart, I took this up a bit personally and decided to test if this guy really lived by what he was saying.

I drafted a mail addressed to him explaining the present status of the module and deliberately misspelled his name. No prizes for guessing what happened next. The mail was duly acknowledged with a rather terse note on watching out for spelling mistakes. He had fallen right into my trap! Yeah!! me now turn into a big time con-man!!

“What’s in a name?” I replied.