We, here at the Pluralist Network, love this naming rule from Neil Panchal of U.S. Graphics Company:
Every name you choose, for files, scripts, directories, functions, variables, classes, commits, branches, anything, must use precise professional vocabulary. Choose the word a 1972 IBM engineer would write in a specification. No slang, no casual shorthand, no cute or clever names, no words borrowed from chat culture. This applies universally, not only to the one example that follows: a script that deploys dashboards is
deploy_dashboards.sh, notpush_dashboards.sh. That is one illustration of the principle, not the extent of it.
The 1972 IBM engineer is a wonderful reference point. You can almost see and smell the manual. Someone chose each word carefully and thoughtfully because someone else would have to operate the machine.
deploy_dashboards.sh tells us what the script does. With push_dashboards.sh, there is still a question: push them where, and for what purpose?
We’ve added this to our global AGENTS.md for the coding agents we use. Files, functions, variables, commits, branches - we want to understand them when we come back months later.