On the Naming of Methods: A Survey of Professional Developers

TL;DR

This survey of over 1100 professional developers reveals strong consensus on naming standards for source code methods, with minimal influence from experience or programming language, highlighting common practices in software engineering.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of widespread agreement on method naming standards among developers, supported by a large-scale survey.

Findings

Participants agree on the importance of naming standards.

Experience and programming language have little effect on naming practices.

Standardization in method naming is prevalent among professionals.

Abstract

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.