Thesaurus for Software Engineers

[Aristos Queue]

I have recently been looking at code that suffers from a lack of synonyms. Everything in the system has a system-to-component-to-element relationship. There are so many systems and components and elements running around, it is hard to figure out what's up. I've seen this many times in my career. You'll see this in LabVIEW if you look at the collision of naming conventions that happened with libraries and classes -- parent and child are used both for the inheritance relationship of the class and for the virtual folder membership of the project tree. Ug.

It is one of our primary jobs as the authors of software to name things well. "Well" means distinctly, precisely, accurately, simply and unambiguously. Non-English speakers may have an excuse -- I do not know how plentiful synonyms are in the world's human languages. In English, we are blessed with a cornucopia of phrases, a symphony of words tuned to exactly the note we are seeking. In an effort to combat this in your code, I am offering up this list of synonyms. The next time you are creating an API with a relationship, please consider using the full richness of our language.

Feel free to add more as they occur to you. For bonus points, post glyphs to go along with the pairs that can be used in VI icons. Several of these are already part of the NI glyph library in the Icon Editor.

• whole part
  
• wrapper core
  
• system component
  
• speaker listener
  
• master slave
  
• outer inner
  
• primary secondary
  
• facade structure
  
• server client
  
• framework plug-in
  
• source sink
  
• parent child
  
• manager delegate
  
• caller callee
  
• refer refee
  
• source destination
  
• source target
  
• original copy
  
• controller puppet
  
• interface implementation
  
• object aspect
  
• container content
  
• amalgam element
  
• genotype phenotype
  
• base derived
  
• director actor
  
• exterior interior
  
• recipe ingredient
  
• body organ
  
• super sub
  
• group member
  
• real proxy
  
• package piece
  
• aggregate fragment
  
• general specific
  
• construct foundation
  
• product factor
  
• view model
  
• shell kernel
  
• mask identity
  
• carapace meat
  
• leader follower
  
• application add-on
  
• face heart
  
• sum segment
  
• edge locus
  
• commander toady
  
• senior junior
  
• owner operator
  

[ShaunR]

From what I can tell, most of those are "antonyms" although it's difficult to classify "commander toady"

[crelf]

"face heart"? Awwwww

So I wonder if this would make a nice labviewwiki.org entry? Maybe it could be expanded to include antonyms that are specifically LabVIEW-centric?

[todd]

producer consumer

employer employee

judge executioner

[Yair]

At least now I know what a carapace is.

[Aristos Queue]

From what I can tell, most of those are "antonyms" although it's difficult to classify "commander toady"

Read it again. It is a list of synonyms. Each item in the list is a pair.

[GregSands]

Read it again. It is a list of synonyms. Each item in the list is a pair.

Definitely not synonyms (words which mean the same thing). Not strictly antonyms either (words which mean opposite things). I guess you could call them pairs, but there is probably a more grammatically correct term.

[akamu]

Calling them "ordered pairs" probably works well...

[MarkCG]

Master Blaster ?