Thank you so much for this article.
On the boolean thing, I think that if you borrow the ’self’ from Python you won’t get the ‘crazy’ words.

if( self_is_sleeping )
wakeUp()

How about relaxing your rule that Booleans must start with is_ or has_ and change it to say that Booleans must start with or contain “is” or “has”.

They you can have “my_age_is_old” and “my_family_has_children”.

I always use the prefix i_am or i_have as they have the same structure as is_ and has_ except they are in the first person context and shows ownership like my_ does. You may have already thought of this, but it seems to work, at least for me.

I am wondering if instead of using “my” for the boolean member you use “it”, like you do in for loops for object specification.

Instead of:

my_is_old, my_has_children

You would have:

it_is_old, it_has_children

I would assume that since “it” is being used in the variable name and isn’t by itself that “it” would be recognized as a class member instead of as part of a for loop. Other pronouns would possibly work as well, but they often are gender specific and may not work in the context of the class:

he_is_old, she_has_children

Have you considered doing this?
“i_am_old” or “i_have_children”
“we_are_old” or “we_have_children”

I thing the answer is simple: Use no prefixes and always refer to them using this pointer. Like this (pun intended):

if( ! this->isReadable )
rewrite();

Since you are using is_ and has_ in conjunction with my_ and our_, had you given thought to just applying proper english? Instead of my_is_old and my_has_children, would it be particularly bad to say i_am_old and i_have_children, or for statics, we_are_old and we_have_children?

I can see the upsides and downsides to this – upside being increased readability and possibly clarity, and it seems that it wouldn’t require any extra thought as we already process language that way. The biggest downside would be the increased variability, but since you are already using my_/our_ and is_/has_ for different situations…

What do u think about using this:
is_my_old and has_my_children

How about using “I_am” instead on “is_” and I_have” instead of “has_” for boolean members?

Hence: “I_am_old” instead of “my_is_old”
and “I_have_children” instead of “my_has_children”.

My personal favorite is also the one which was suggested the most: i_am_…, i_have_… and we_are_…, we_have_…