Naming matters more than you think.
I’ve been going through parts of our codebase recently and kept hitting the same friction. A class for export was named one thing, but everyone calls it something else. Nobody uses the actual class name.
This export class started out fine. Over time the semantics shifted and the functionality evolved, but the name stuck. Every time I needed to touch it, I had to pause and mentally translate. What’s it actually called again?
Small thing. But small things compound.
I had a bit of extra time this week, so I renamed it. Felt cleaner straight away. The code said what we meant. No more translating in my head between what we call it and what it’s named.
That cognitive load is easy to ignore when you’re busy. It doesn’t break anything. The tests still pass. But it sits there, costing every developer who touches that file something. Including future you.
Good naming makes the code speak the same language as the people who built and use the system. When the code and the conversation match, everything moves faster.
So rename the thing.