Foreword

Some years ago I wrote a little book on using Vim.

I knew when I started that there were already more comprehensive works on the topic. I had no intention of competing with those.

There were also great free tutorials, including the one built into Vim. There was little reason to make yet another.

What I could bring to the literature was an approach to understanding Vim instead of memorising incantations and key sequences.

In the same way, I’ve found people trying to write “Clean Code” by memorising rules and forms that they find in books and articles, following them slavishly without a real appreciation of why or when to use the techniques.

The literature about naming classes, variables, functions, and modules has the same problem.

We don’t need more rules and forms. There are plenty of great collections of rules. They are all pretty good with minor contradictions, but the contradictions are all contextual.

My goal with this book is to impart a better understanding of naming and how to tailor your code to the team you work with every day.

That will be my success criteria.

I pray you will find value here.

— Tim Ottinger