The Power of Names

When we have some object, we always give it a name. Words such as books, cars, planes, people, tree, they are all names for a concept, rather than a actual object. We understand that "car", "a car", "that car"and "the car" to mean different things, the first is an idea of something with four wheels, the second is any one instance of a car, while the other two examples are instances of a car that is specified via relationships.

Diverging a little, in computing, what we are manipulating can be split into two types - math, and referencing. When we do something, all we are really doing is:

1. select what we are doing it to (e.g. this bank statement, this picture, this x)
   
2. select what we are doing (e.g. adding a bill, bluring a picture, function y)
   

Sure there are control flow structures (if, while, for...), and other more esoteric structures (map, fold, expand...), and there are data structures (structs, classes, types...), but they are distractions away from the point. They are part of the transformation between intent and the realised computations. While the creation of what lies underneath the bonnet is important to a computer, the central goal is to move the authorship away from being the dominant factor, and replace it with the intent. The intent of an action is simply to carry out that action on some information. That is why naming is so important, because we need to be able to refer to something precisely.