If I change my computer name how does it affect my computer's paths? I wanted to change my computer's name and did so.  I used it for a while but when doing other programming related work felt like I was hitting a wall sometimes because of pathing.  

I changed terminal name by executing a command line command and did the rest through Users in System Settings inside of Advanced Settings that you can access by pressing control and clicking on the User.  

Ex. starting up a MySQL server/accessing MySQL command line tools/Python or php acting up.

Can changing my computer's name result in this kind of affect?
Not sure what you mean- you can't change the computer name in the Users &amp; Groups pref pane, you do that in the Sharing pref pane. Did you change you user account name accidentally?

In general- changing the Computer Name in Sharing will set the bonjour name (My-Computer.local), you can use the 'scutil' command to set your hostname:

sudo scutil --set HostName mycomputer