The purpose of a software naming convention is to help the people who read and write the code understand the program. Understanding the code makes it easier to use, write, or modify correctly. The goal in naming is to use names that are easy to recognize and associate with their meaning and role.

The basic content idea is to use words and character sequences that help connect a name with the entity that it represents. It is a great idea to use names that are intuitive, but developers have surprisingly divergent ideas on which names are intuitive. A more realistic objective is to use names that help the reader understand the code.

The basic visual style idea is to use different visual styles for different identifier types. This makes it easier to recognize the various elements of the language. Clearly, some consistency and differentiation is important. There is a balance in differentiation because having a large number of styles makes for too much to remember. In any case, only a few variations of naming style are available in MATLAB, so the language elements have to be grouped into a smaller number of styles. There is controversy is over how best to do it.

Establishing a naming convention for a group of developers is important, but the process can become ridiculously contentious. There is no naming convention that will please everyone.