Yesterday I attended a meeting with a member of a clients configuration management team. Eventually the topic of “what do you want to call your source repository” came up and we all looked at each other and blinked.
Eventually a neuron in my brain triggered and I realised that this was an opportunity to pick a code name! Several good options were put on the table but for some reason the development team leader baulked at them and opted for something mundane and boring (
).
I can never understand why people choose grey names for projects, its their opportunity to put some of their personality into the project, but more importantly a good code name serves several useful purposes. A good code name:
- is a short hand way to refering to the system.
- is great for starting elevator pitches to executive management.
- is a way of avoiding analysis paralysis on namespace naming.
If I have convinced you to create a code-name for your project, here are a few rules that I would stick to for .NET projects:
- Avoid acronyms, they look like crap in namespaces.
- Prefer a single word codename, two word tops.
- Make it easy to search and replace in code.
- Place names, people names and funny words make great code names.
Do you have a code name for your project? If not, make one up and just start refering to the project as that – see how quickly your co-workers catch on.