Redundancy in names is a bad smell. Names should be contextual
TL;DR: Don't prefix your attributes with your class name
Problems
- Not Contextual Names
Solutions
- Remove the class prefix from the attribute
Context
This is a naming smell, we should not read attributes in isolation and names are contextual.
Sample Code
Wrong
public class Employee {
String empName = "John";
int empId = 5;
int empAge = 32;
}
Right
public class Employee {
String name;
int id; // Ids are another smell
int age; // Storing the age is yet another smell
}
Detection
[X] Semi-Automatic
When the full name is included in the prefix, our linters can warn us.
Tags
- Naming
Conclusion
Careful naming is a very important task.
We need to name after the behavior, not type or data
Relations
More Info
Disclaimer
Code Smells are just my opinion.
Credits
Photo by Phoenix Han on Unsplash
Copying skips understanding. Understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is how it is. When you copy it, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.
Jason Fried
This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.
Top comments (2)
Any sort of prefix is generally a bad idea. Databases and CSS are notoriously bad about this.
IMO if you have to prefix something for it to work or make sense, then there is something else wrong.
indeed