Error 409: Name Conflict (or why naming things is hard) 🛑💻

"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things." — Phil Karlton.

I felt that one deeply this week.

The naming dilemma

I was ready to deploy my solo project. The codebase was clean, the CI/CD pipeline was green, and the logo was pixel-perfect. The name? SafeStream. It sounded robust, scalable, secure. System.out.println("Perfect Name");

Then, I hit a runtime error in the real world: Trademark Infringement. ⚠️ Turns out, the SafeStream namespace was already allocated in the European registry.

The solution: Quick refactoring

Instead of catching a LegalBattleException (which I definitely can't afford), I decided to refactor. Luckily, I hadn't pushed to production (Google Play) yet. It was just a staging environment fail.

So, I executed a global search-and-replace: s/SafeStream/EmberKin/g

Introducing: EmberKin 🔥👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

It's not just a patch; it's a major upgrade.

🔹 Ember: The persistent spark. Low latency warmth that protects. 🔹 Kin: The local network. The connected nodes (family).

The repo is renamed, the assets are updated, and the build is finally passing. EmberKin is launching soon. 🚀

Lessons learned

This experience reinforced a few important principles:

Trademark research is crucial before committing to a project name
Naming things is genuinely hard - hence why it's one of the two hard problems in computer science
Refactoring early is better than refactoring later - I caught this before production deployment
Sometimes a constraint creates better solutions - EmberKin actually fits the project concept better than SafeStream

The technical aspect

The renaming process involved:

Global search and replace across the entire codebase
Updating configuration files and environment variables
Renaming repositories and project directories
Updating brand assets and documentation
Modifying CI/CD pipeline configurations

The beauty of well-structured code is that such changes can be managed systematically, even if they're initially frustrating.

Stay tuned for more updates on the EmberKin journey!