SEFeb 26, 2021

On the Naming of Methods: A Survey of Professional Developers

arXiv:2102.13555v137 citations
Originality Synthesis-oriented
AI Analysis

This addresses naming consistency in software development, but it is incremental as it confirms existing standards rather than introducing new ones.

The paper surveyed over 1100 professional developers to assess consensus on naming standards for source code methods, finding strong agreement on their importance and minimal influence from experience or programming language.

This paper describes the results of a large (+1100 responses) survey of professional software developers concerning standards for naming source code methods. The various standards for source code method names are derived from and supported in the software engineering literature. The goal of the survey is to determine if there is a general consensus among developers that the standards are accepted and used in practice. Additionally, the paper examines factors such as years of experience and programming language knowledge in the context of survey responses. The survey results show that participants very much agree about the importance of various standards and how they apply to names. Additionally, the survey shows that years of experience and the programming language the participants use has almost no effect on their responses.

Foundations

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