# On the Naming of Methods: A Survey of Professional Developers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.13555 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13555/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Agent READMEs: An Empirical Study of Context Files for Agentic Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12884/) (2025)
- [NLPerturbator: Studying the Robustness of Code LLMs to Natural Language Variations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.19783/) (2024)
- [An Exploratory Study on Code Attention in BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10200/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning-Based Identification of Inconsistent Method Names: How Far Are We?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12617/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper describes the results of a large (+1100 responses) survey of professional software developers concerning standards for naming source code methods. The various standards for source code method names are derived from and supported in the software engineering literature. The goal of the survey is to determine if there is a general consensus among developers that the standards are accepted and used in practice. Additionally, the paper examines factors such as years of experience and programming language knowledge in the context of survey responses. The survey results show that participants very much agree about the importance of various standards and how they apply to names. Additionally, the survey shows that years of experience and the programming language the participants use has almost no effect on their responses.