Selecting a variable name is actually very meaningful, and not just for maintainability reasons.
If you have difficulty naming a variable, it could be because you don't have a good grasp of either the problem or your solution, or concepts are conflated. It could be because you don't yet have a vocabulary that provides the terms you need -- imagine if you didn't have the words "result" or "set", but were trying to name a variable to hold the output of a query. It could be that your functions don't do just one thing.
It could even be because your language isn't expressive enough.
I can generally tell when I'm doing things 'right' because decomposing the problem into functions, naming them, and composing them into a solution is easy: it feels like I'm cutting with the grain, not against it.
In this way, coding is like writing a speech or a poem. Deliberating on precisely the right words to use is a key part of the process, and the better your grip on the domain and your arguments, the easier it is to find the words.
If you have difficulty naming a variable, it could be because you don't have a good grasp of either the problem or your solution, or concepts are conflated. It could be because you don't yet have a vocabulary that provides the terms you need -- imagine if you didn't have the words "result" or "set", but were trying to name a variable to hold the output of a query. It could be that your functions don't do just one thing.
It could even be because your language isn't expressive enough.
I can generally tell when I'm doing things 'right' because decomposing the problem into functions, naming them, and composing them into a solution is easy: it feels like I'm cutting with the grain, not against it.
In this way, coding is like writing a speech or a poem. Deliberating on precisely the right words to use is a key part of the process, and the better your grip on the domain and your arguments, the easier it is to find the words.