One of the most precious responsibilities afforded to me as a developer is the ability to name my projects. Moreover, as Development Manager I could — theoretically — dictate the names of all the projects done in my department. That’d be dictatorial and I don’t do it… but I do reserve the right to veto or break non-majority ties.

Here’s a listing of the projects names used on our ‘current’ projects:

• Greenspan (parent project of the others)
• Lockhart
• Kayhill
• Hopkins
• Osgood
• Downham
• Holbrooke

Greenspan was the ‘first’ in the new generation of projects we’ve done at $work. It established the system used to name others. I regret choosing a name that is so obvious to anyone who knows what the Federal Reserve Board, but it established the general rules we use:

• Words that break down into two words well (Os-Good, Down-Uhm, etc)
• Words that would seem at home when naming English cities
• Words that aren’t in people’s general lexicon

Since I also wear the hat of System Administrator, I get to pick names for the servers we run. The current naming scheme is based on the Greenspan project. We use the names of currencies for our servers: peseta, drachma, lira, pound, euro. We made a list of names on our wiki of prospective names so that when a new box arrives, we have a queue of names we can choose from. We usually vote unless the box is going to primarily serve a single person’s interest. In that case, they name it on their own.

It is said that to name a thing is the power to control it. I’m not sure if that is the underlying principal, but I can say that project naming and releasing procedures have always been extremely interesting to me. I love reading ChangeLogs and reading about the process that companies use to push out shiny new toys.

I think that codenames say something about the ideology of group that uses them. I’ve always been impressed by the huge list of codenames used by Intel for their products. We could use a scheme that generates informational names like fra0132 for “Franklin location, Rack 01, Position 32″. If we had a hundred boxes I’d consider it. But in a smaller installation all of these machines have a personality and to treat them like anonymous slaves would be a disservice.

These names are often difficult to get consensus on. I might love a name only to have another developer loathe it. It takes a lot of effort to cook them up. But it’s all worth it in the end.

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Posted at : February 20th, 2008 - 10:06 pm
Filed under : General, Useless Information, Work
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