Do Variable Names Matter for AI Code Completion?
When GitHub Copilot suggests your next line of code, does it matter whether your variables are named current_temperature or just x ?
I ran an experiment to find out, testing 8 different AI models on 500 Python code samples across 7 naming styles. The results suggest that descriptive variable names do help AI code completion.
The Experiment
Each code sample was transformed into different naming conventions:
Descriptive ( process_user_input )
) Standard styles (snake_case, PascalCase, SCREAM_SNAKE_CASE)
Minimal ( calc_pay )
) Obfuscated ( fn2 )
Models ranging from 0.5B to 8B parameters completed 25 tokens for each sample. I measured exact matches, Levenshtein similarity (edit distance) and semantic correctness using an LLM judge.
... continue reading