How to Name Your Project

You may have noticed that basically all Rattail documentation uses the name "Poser" to refer to a custom project.

This is just a stand-in name and in practice you should (mentally and literally) replace that with the actual name of your project.

Your first task then is to come up with a good name. This page describes some guidelines the author has found useful.

(See also Creating a New Project.)

Identify Stakeholders / Audience

The first step surely, is to figure out who the name needs to "please" - i.e. if you give the project a crappy name, who (that matters) will have an opinion about it?

The remaining guidelines should be considered by all parties, yourself and other stakeholders.

Alliteration

A good name needn't be alliterative on its own per se, but it can help to be "alliterative" when taken with some other name which is more typically associated with the organization whose project it is.

For instance the name Rattail is meant to be "alliterative" in this way, with the word "retail" - although it's perhaps better described as a "corruption" of the word.

For a similar example, let's say your company is ACME Bricks, Inc., then you might name your project "Brock" instead.

Another example for an organization called Springfield Foods, might be "Sprung".

Keep it Short

The name is something which will be typed many times throughout the project's lifetime, so the shorter the better.

Keep it Unique

Not only will a unique name help when discussing the project over email as well as in person, but it will aid greatly if you ever decide to change the name. A global search/replace across the project can be frustrating indeed if the project name is a "common" word of some sort.

Name vs. Acronym

You may have noticed that none of the examples so far have included acronyms as names. That's on purpose, but an explanation is warranted.

Let's say you want to use an acronym for a name: ACME (nevermind what it stands for). Many times in code, but often also in casual email discussions etc., it will be tempting to stylize this as "Acme" even though it "should be ACME" - or should it?

That sort of ambiguity is one reason to avoid acronyms. Or if you do still want to use an acronym, preferably make sure it's one which will always be stylized in a "normal" way (e.g. always "Acme" and never "ACME").