I think that's a fair point. Guerrilla pretty much said what I would say... most of my production code just uses plain Jane clear names like "user" or a variable named "name_array".

The bigger message is to communicate that programming is fun to people who want to learn. I think you're average working programmer out there probably is... but my "educational" experience was not that way. It wasn't really about using whimsical names either, it was because it was taught so passionless and half-assed. I really am just saying this works for me and I see a lot of kids coming into Ruby and to Rails really getting a kick out of the small stuff... It's passion and it's details that are important... whimsy is optional.