Do you keep Source-Code consistent with User-Facing naming and concepts?

Question

Do you have remnants of older product names in the source-code?Or do you refactor all internal code references, when new product name changes are required?Coming into an older code-base it can be confusing to see multiple outdated concepts everywhere...What are your thoughts?

jamesfinlayson · Accepted Answer

Yes - at least one feature in something I work on has a different name in the code to what customers see. It was like that when I got here and as nice as it would be to change the old names, it's not a small change (I'd need to rename a database table and multiple columns to fully remove the old name) and it's a low-value change so I'd struggle to get it scheduled anyway.Much more annoying to me is one concept having multiple names in the code e.g. purchase and transaction or buyer and member used interchangeably.

destevil · Answer

These will diverge. It isn't worth it to refactor since you'll just introduce new bugs. Keep a glossary or a naming spreadsheet if there are too many to remember.