typenings

Typenings is a term used in software engineering to describe the practice, study, and discourse surrounding the naming and organization of types in programming languages and data models. The word combines type and naming, and it is employed to discuss how type names, aliases, and hierarchies influence readability, maintainability, and tooling.

Scope and concepts

Typenings covers conventions for naming types, creating and using type aliases, defining discriminated unions, and organizing generic parameters. It also considers how type names relate to documentation, how they affect API design, and how schemas in databases or data interchange formats are named. Differences across languages in naming styles (for example camelCase versus PascalCase), abbreviation use, and semantic clarity are central topics within typenings.

Applications

In practice, typenings guides decisions about when to introduce a distinct type versus a simple alias, whether to expose certain types publicly (for example, UserId) and how to structure type hierarchies. It informs API design, library interfaces, and data schemas in JSON, GraphQL, or database schemas. Good typenings can improve code discoverability, refactor safety, and cross-team consistency, while also helping automated tooling infer and validate type information.

Criticisms and challenges

Critics argue that typenings can become pedantic if overemphasized, potentially slowing development or hindering expressive naming. Effective typenings practices rely on governance and shared conventions to remain practical across projects and teams.

See also

Type system, Naming convention, API design, Data modeling, Type alias.