Naming convention for homonymous classes in different libraries

Question

In any project with relatively big number of dependencies there are always a lot of commongly named classes in different libraries. For example, Configuration is very widely used:

It slows down the programmer as he has to carefully pick the right class from the list. It is also very irritating if you have to use different configurations in one class, so they have to be prepended with full package name.

I'm writing a library which also needs a Configuration class. Should I use this name? Or is it better to name it {Libname}Configuration? Is their any common way to avoid such problems?

Answer 1

I think you should name your class in the way that is most clear of it's usage and you shouldn't care too much if another classes with the same name exist. As you know, the usage of packages reduces the risk of naming collisions.

For any project I think it's good that the whole team should have a convention related to basic naming and formatting used. It's important to use a consistent naming convention so that when new people work on it, they pick it up faster. I think that conventions also help increase productivity since it's easier to remember names.

I think it's good to spend some time thinking about classes, not only in terms of algorithms but also as what business part they fill. To think about why is a class necessary and what brings to the project, can make you more aware of the way your method/class/variable works within the application workflow.

That being said, I think that maybe your IDE has some option to hide some of the classes is shows. I'm using IntelliJ and it has a feature for this situation, even though it's a bit hidden.

Answer 2

I think it is usually not a very good idea to start with library name for a class, simply because in the long run that will make it more difficult to remember, and because it diminishes readability.

There are ways to setup your IDE (depending on which IDE you use) so that autocomplete shows the most used classes first. You can also get to a class quickly by first typing the name, then the library, when using autocomplete. These are all dependent on you IDE. But generally it seems like a bad practice to start a classname with the name of the library.