8. Do Not Use Abbreviations
Abbreviations made sense when storage was scarce. Today they mostly cause confusion — here's why descriptive names beat clever shorthand.
Abbreviations are commonly used when writing code. In the past, this was partly a necessity: storage was limited, bandwidth was expensive, and some programming languages only allowed short variable names. This led to cryptic abbreviations like i18n for internationalization (18 letters between the "i" and the "n") and a11y for accessibility.
Today, most of those limitations are gone. Modern programming languages support long, descriptive variable names. Thanks to minifiers, tree shaking, and server-side compression, you no longer have to worry about file size or data transfer. Readability and maintainability are now far more important than saving a few bytes.
Still, many developers love using abbreviations. For common-sense cases like Id, UI, Info, App, or API, that's fine. But it's also quite common to see new abbreviations invented on the spot that aren't intuitive at all — or even worse: reused abbreviations. This causes unnecessary confusion. What do you mean by "e"? Is it an Event? An Error?
That's why this week's Developer Tile of Wisdom is:
Do Not Use Abbreviations
If you really feel the need to use abbreviations — for example, because your client does too — at least include a list of them in your project's README. That way, everyone (including future you) will know exactly what they mean.
🧠 This post is part of my weekly series Developer Tiles of Wisdom: short, practical insights for better code, better teams, and better projects.
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