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2026-05-02 | 🔤 Expand Abbreviations: initialRequest 🧹

🎯 What We Did

🔤 This session continued the ongoing effort to eliminate all abbreviations from the Haskell codebase. 📋 We wrote a comprehensive incremental plan documenting every abbreviated name found across all source files, organized by file and ordered from easiest to most complex. 🚀 Then we took the first step: expanding the local variable name initReq and its cousin initialReq to the full descriptive name initialRequest everywhere in the codebase.

🔍 The Problem

🗂️ The same concept — an HTTP request object freshly parsed from a URL string, before any headers or body are configured — was spelled three different ways across the codebase. 😵 In GcpAuth.hs, BlogComments.hs, BlogImage/Provider.hs, and StaticGiscus.hs it was initReq. 😕 In Platforms/Mastodon.hs, Platforms/Bluesky.hs, and Platforms/Twitter.hs it was initialReq. 📖 Neither spelling tells the full story: Req is not a word, and init adds nothing when initial is the complete adjective.

📋 The Incremental Plan

📄 The session started by creating a dedicated spec file at specs/expand-abbreviations.md. 🗺️ The plan organizes work into two phases and lists every abbreviated name found across all source files, along with its full expansion.

🔢 Phase 1 covers local variable names — bindings inside function bodies. 🧩 These are the safest to rename because they do not affect exported APIs and do not require any changes to how modules are imported. 🏷️ Phase 2 covers record field names with Hungarian-notation prefixes such as bcAuthor, gcBody, and jcIss. 📦 These require more care: when two records in the same module share the same field name after the prefix is removed, the solution is to move one record type to its own dedicated module and import it qualified.

📋 The plan lists items such as sak for serviceAccountKey in GcpAuth.hs, the jc prefix family for JwtClaims fields, the bc and gc prefix families in BlogComments.hs, local variables ls, pos, len, wl, val, and acc in InternalLinking.hs, and similar names across DailyReflection.hs, BlogSeries.hs, AiFiction.hs, ReflectionTitle.hs, and Text.hs. 🔢 Each item is a checkbox; each PR checks off exactly one item.

🔧 The Change

🔄 The rename touched seven source files. 📦 In GcpAuth.hs and BlogComments.hs, a single initReq binding became initialRequest. 📦 In BlogImage/Provider.hs, six separate functions each used initReq as a local binding for a freshly parsed request; all six became initialRequest. 📦 In StaticGiscus.hs, one binding in fetchDiscussionPage changed. 📦 In Platforms/Mastodon.hs, two bindings in post and deletePost changed from initialReq. 📦 In Platforms/Bluesky.hs, four bindings across createSession, uploadBlob, createPost, and deletePost changed. 📦 In Platforms/Twitter.hs, two bindings changed.

🎯 The pattern is the same in every case: a local binding immediately after a call to parseRequest. 🔑 The value is always an HTTP request that has been parsed from a URL but not yet configured with a method, headers, or body — hence “initial”. 📖 The full word initialRequest communicates that clearly without any mental decoding.

✅ Outcome

🟢 All 2031 tests pass. 🟢 Zero hlint hints. 🔤 The name initialRequest now appears consistently in all seven files. 🚫 The abbreviated spellings initReq and initialReq have been completely eliminated from the codebase.

📚 Book Recommendations

📖 Similar

• 🧼💾 Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin is relevant because the core argument here — that a name like initialRequest is always better than initReq — is one of the central principles Martin builds his entire philosophy of clean code around.
• The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt is relevant because the incremental plan created in this session embodies their “broken windows” metaphor: each small rename makes the next rename easier, and a codebase with no abbreviations is easier to read than one with even a few.

↔️ Contrasting

• ✅💻 Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve McConnell offers a contrasting view where tightly scoped local variables may reasonably use shorter names, arguing that the surrounding context often supplies enough information to make req perfectly readable without spelling out initialRequest.

🔗 Related

• Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael C. Feathers is related because the incremental, one-change-at-a-time approach used here is exactly the kind of discipline Feathers recommends when improving code that must stay working at every step.