gsaslis / coding-kata-naming

A coding kata on naming: the hardest problem in software engineering

Codefather: A Coding Kata on Naming

A coding kata about good (and bad!) naming in software development.

Tip

In Greece, at least, Godfathers pick the name for the child they baptize. This is where Codefather comes from, but it is quite possible that a lot of people don’t have this prior knowledge, which renders the choice of this name for the kata a clear problem. Though the play on words makes Codefather a fun title, it is arguably still a bad choice. Consider this the first lesson included in this kata about naming.

Goal

By the end of this kata you should have established an appreciation of the intrinsic difficulty in picking good names and you will hopefully be convinced that naming is an important activity in software development and is worth your time and energy.

Requirements

Even though you can choose any programming language, this kata is really a modeling exercise. It is thus possible to complete this on a piece of paper, a napkin, a notepad, your favourite IDE or text editor. In fact, you can even solve this in your brain!

General Naming Rules

Before you go on to the kata itself, you might want to consider the following list of rules around naming.

Problem Description

The problem we will examine is one we all have to deal with:

Our mobile phone bills.

In short, you are responsible for creating a model, i.e. all the objects and data structures that can provide your client - the mobile network operator - the most flexibility in billing its subscribers.

For the purposes of this kata, we just need the model to support the creation of the mobile phone bill. We can safely assume there is some existing billing system that has calculated every charge on our account.

We are simply concerned with presenting that information in a document.

If you are ready to begin, please proceed to Step 1 !