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--- visibility: public --- # Naming **repo:** [gruhn/awesome-naming](https://github.com/gruhn/awesome-naming) **category:** [[miscellaneous|Miscellaneous]] --- # Awesome Naming [](https://awesome.re) Famously... > There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. > > ― Phil Karlton Concepts in computer science are usually nothing tangible so it's no surprise that naming things is hard. Nevertheless, we _do_ come up with clever, creative and funny names. Some of them so established, we never pause and admire. This is a curated list for when naming things is done right. ## Contents - [Computer Graphics](#computer-graphics) - [Data Structures and Algorithms](#data-structures-and-algorithms) - [Design Patterns and Anti Patterns](#design-patterns-and-anti-patterns) - [Functions](#functions) - [IT Security](#it-security) - [Machine [Learning](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/learning) and Artificial Intelligence](#machine-learning-and-artificial-intelligence) - [Programming Languages and Programming Language Theory](#programming-languages-and-programming-language-theory) - [Theoretical Computer Science](#theoretical-computer-science) - [Tools, Applications, Libraries, Frameworks](#tools-applications-libraries-frameworks) - [User Interface Design](#user-interface-design) - [Other](#other) --- ## Computer Graphics - [Gift wrapping algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_wrapping_algorithm) - An algorithm for constructing the smallest shape that wraps a collection of points. ## Data Structures and Algorithms - [Backtracking](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtracking) - When you explore a search space and you reach a dead end, you follow your *tracks* back to the last crossroad and try the other way. - [Brute force](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_search) - Violence is actually almost always a solution, but not a very clever one. - [Greedy algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_algorithm) - An algorithm that finds a solution by always picking the currently best-looking option without thinking too much about past and future decisions. - [Hill climbing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_climbing) - Starting somewhere in the hilly "landscape" of solutions, you go in the direction of steepest ascent until reaching the top of a hill. You might miss higher hills, though. - [Israeli Queue](https://rapidapi.com/blog/israeli-queues-exploring-a-bizarre-data-structure/) - A type of priority queue and a reference to the infamously unorganized queues in Israel. Here items can *cut in line* when they *have already waiting friends*. - [Stack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_(abstract_data_type)) - Like with a stack of pancakes, you can only add and remove items from the top of this data structure. - [Tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_(data_structure)) - A hierarchically organized data structure. From the _root_ item, the other items _branch out_ into _nodes_ and _leaves_. A collection of trees is often called a *forest*. - [Queue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queue_(abstract_data_type)) - In this data structure, items are always added at the end and removed at the front as if the items were waiting in line. ## Design Patterns and Anti-Patterns - [Adapter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapter_pattern) - Allows classes with incompatible interfaces to work together by wrapping its own interface around that of an already existing class. - [Facade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern) - Analogous to a facade in architecture, a facade is an object that serves as a front-facing interface masking more complex underlying structure. - [Promise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises) - A representation of a result that is available in the future, unless there are errors. Like in reality, [promises](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/promises) are broken sometimes. - [Shotgun surgery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_surgery) - A programming antipattern where, in a single change, you wildly add code everywhere in your codebase. - [Spaghetti Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_code) - A program with a tangled and hard-to-follow stucture. ## Functions - [fold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fold_(higher-order_function)) - Like a blanket being folded up, this function iterates a collection and in each step combines the current item with everything that has already been folded. - [munch](https://hackage.[haskell](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/haskell).org/package/base-4.19.0.0/docs/Text-ParserCombinators-ReadP.html#v:munch) - Parser function that greedily consumes an input stream until it's satisfied. - [trampoline](https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/trampoline) - Continuously runs functions that themselves return functions. Like a child on a trampoline that _returns_ and bounces back up. - [zip](https://hackage.[haskell](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/haskell).org/package/base-4.12.0.0/docs/Prelude.html#v:zip) - Merges two lists into one list of pairs like the interlocking teeth of a zipper. ## IT Security - [Backdoor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)) - A method of bypassing normal authentication in a computer system. - [Computer virus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus) - A computer program that self-replicates by _infecting_ other computer programs, similar to the behavior of biological viruses. - [Cyber hygiene](https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-cyber-hygiene-definition-cyber-hygiene-benefits-best-practices-and-more) - Steps and practices that users should take to maintain system health and improve online [security](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/security/security). - [Honeypot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(computing)) - Part of a system meant to look like an attractive target but actually helps detect and deflect attackers. - [Phishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing) - Refers to the use of lures to "[fish](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/development-environment/fish)" for sensitive information. - [Phoning home](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoning_home) - When a system (e.g. stolen computer) secretly reports back to a third party other than the current possessor. The name is a reference to the movie E.T. - [Sandbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_(computer_security)) - A safe and isolated environment to test unverified programs that may contain malicious code. - [Spear phishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing#Spear_phishing) - A targeted, personal phishing attack to trick a specific individual or organization into believing that they are legitimate - [Trojan horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)) - Malware which misleads users of its true intent. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive Trojan Horse. ## Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence - [Confusion matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_matrix) - A tabular summary of a classifier's "confusion", i.e., how often it thought to make correct predictions when it actually didn't. - [Decision boundary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_boundary) - A boundary dividing the space of possible data points. Here you decide, everything on this side is SPAM, everything on that side is not. - [Gradient descent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradient_descent) - Minimizing a cost function by iteratively computing the gradient and moving in the direction of steepest descent. - [Hallucination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)) - A confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data. - [Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training,_validation,_and_test_data_sets) - The process of showing the machine a bunch of examples, until it learns what we want from it. ## Programming Languages and Programming Language Theory - [Choreographic programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choreographic_programming) - A programming paradigm where programs are compositions of interactions among multiple concurrent participants. - [Clojure](https://clojure.org/) - A functional language making extensive use of **closures** but with a **j** because it's running on the [Java](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/java) virtual machine. - [C++](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B#External_links) - Although C was certainly a bad name, C++ was quite clever. The iconic increment operator **++** indicates that **C++** is the successor. - [Garbage Collector](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science)) - Part of a program that attempts to find and reclaim garbage pieces of memory not used anymore. - [Lazy evaluation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_evaluation) - An evaluation strategy which suspends evaluation until it's absolutely necessary and then never does it again. - [Syntactic sugar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_sugar) - Syntax that makes the language "sweeter" for human use. Usually a shorthand for common operations that can also be expressed in a more verbose form. ## User Interface Design - [Bento layout](https://www.saasframe.io/blog/the-bento-layout-trend) - A grid-based layout resembling the compartmentation of bento boxes. - [Breadcrumb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation)) - Navigational aid allowing users to keep track of their location within programs, documents, or websites. The term is a reference to the fairy tale _Hansel and Gretel_. - [Carousel](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/designing-effective-carousels/) - A kind of animated slideshow looping back on itself. - [Clipboard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipboard_(computing)) - Where you temporarily put _files_ you are working with (i.e. the copy & paste buffer). - [Desktop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor) - The metaphorical top of the user's desk, upon which objects such as documents and folders of documents can be placed. - [Hamburger button](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_button) - A button to toggle a menu. The associated icon resembles a hamburger. - [Optimistic UI](https://uxplanet.org/optimistic-1000-34d9eefe4c05) - User interfaces that assume expensive operations will complete successfully, thereby improving the perceived performance. - [Scrolling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolling) - Screen content is often [less](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/less) like a book with discrete pages and more like a continuous roll of parchment, i.e., a scroll. ## Theoretical Computer Science - [Busy Beaver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver) - Turing machines that produce numbers so insanely large, no other algorithm can keep up with them. - [Clique problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clique_problem) - The problem of finding groups of mutual friends in a network of people with friendship relations. Or more generally, finding complete subgraphs. - [Game of Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life) - A game world that showcases how astonishing complexity can arise from very simple ingredients. - [Oracle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine) - A black box that magically gives [answers](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/answers) even to undecidable questions like the halting problem. - [Pumping lemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma) - The fact that in some formal languages any sufficiently long string can be _pumped_ with repetitions of its substring and the result stays in the same formal language. ## Tools, Applications, Libraries, Frameworks - [bubblewrap](https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap) - Sandboxing tool forming a protective layer for your system. - [clooney](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/clooney) - A [JavaScript](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/javascript) library implementing the actor model for concurrent computation. The term is a reference to George Clooney, who is also an actor. - [CockroachDB](https://web.archive.org/web/20150514123425/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/22/cockroachdb) - [Database](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/databases/database) application, that is marketed as being so fault-tolerant and resilient as a cockroach. - [corrosion](https://github.com/corrosion-rs/corrosion) - The process that turns metal into [rust](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/rust) (literally), but also a tool that "turns" C++ into Rust. - [horcrux](https://github.com/jesseduffield/horcrux) - Splits a file into encrypted fragments that only together can be decrypted again. In the Harry Potter universe, Horcruxes are fragments of a person's soul. To kill the person, all fragments must be destroyed. - [Puppeteer](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer) - A browser automation library. If the browser is the puppet, this is the puppeteer. - [Safari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)) - Web browser developed by Apple. - [tldr](https://tldr.sh/) - Simplified man pages with practical examples. - [Uglify](https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS) - A [JavaScript](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/javascript) minifier. Removes everything that makes the code readable and pretty to make it smaller. - [uppy](https://github.com/transloadit/uppy) - A dog-themed uploader component. The name is a blend of _upload_ and _puppy_. It even comes with a crash recovery plugin called _Golden Retriever_. - [Webpack](https://webpack.js.org/) - A bundler for [JavaScript](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/javascript) and other *web* assets with a short and descriptive name that also somewhat rhymes. - [yarn](https://yarnpkg.com/) - NodeJS dependency manager. ## Other - [a11y, i18n, k8s, ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeronym) - Abbreviating long words by keeping the first and last letter and writing the number of omitted letters in between. - [ACID vs. BASE](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/07/06/brewer-cap-theorem-base/) - Acronyms describing competing [database](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/databases/database) ideologies (aka. SQL vs. NoSQL). Note that acid and base are also opposites in chemistry. - [Bottleneck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottleneck#Computing) - A central part of a network/application that significantly limits throughput/performance and should ideally be eliminated. - [Brick](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(electronics)) - When your device is so corrupted, it virtually turns into a brick. - [camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Use_within_programming_languages) - Different case styles where the name illustrates its appearance. - [Code golf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_golf) - Writing a program in as few characters as possible. Just like how Golf players try to win in the fewest club strokes. - [Cookie licking](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091201-00/?p=15843) - E.g., claiming a [GitHub](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/development-environment/github) issue, then not working on it. - [Easter egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(media)) - A hidden feature, especially in video games, in reference to the Easter egg hunt. - [Firmware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware) - The _ware_ between _software_ and _hardware_. - [Floating point number](https://floating-point-gui.de/formats/fp/) - This representation can encode numbers at very different magnitudes with a limited amount of digits by letting the radix point _float_ instead of being fixed in place. - [Framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_framework) - In [software architecture](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/software-architecture) (like in actual architecture), [frameworks](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/frameworks) provide a basic structure to build upon, guiding and constraining further development. - [Glue Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glue_code) - Jenga and LEGO bricks don't share the same interface, but you can always glue them together. - [Heisenbug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug) - A bug that seems to disappear or change when one tries to study it. It's a pun on Werner Heisenberg, who discovered that the act of observing quantum systems inevitably alters their state. - [Hydra](https://computer-dictionary-online.org/definitions-h/hydra-code) - A bug that, when an attempt to fix it is made, introduces multiple new bugs. It's a bug that cannot be fixed. - [Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(programming)) - A magic program/piece of code is doing its job, but nobody knows how. Like in reality, magic doesn't actually exist. Once you understand it, it's not magic anymore. - [Process starvation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(computer_science)) - A problem where a process is perpetually denied resources to do its work. - [Time travel debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_debugging) - Stepping back in time through source code to understand execution and sometimes even to change history. - [Tree shaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaking) - Shake the dependency tree until all the dead parts are falling off and you end up with a nice lean tree. - [Unfair enumeration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvLsVfq6cks&t=835s) - A program that outputs all even numbers and then all odd numbers generates an unfair enumeration of the natural numbers because some numbers are never reached. - [Yoda condition](https://eslint.org/docs/latest/rules/yoda) - When you write `if ("red" === color) {` instead of `if (color === "red") {` because it reads as, “if red equals the color”, similar to the way the Star Wars character Yoda speaks.