Question on variable naming style (i.e. r versus random)
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No, not fair enough. That's a cop-out. Meaningful variable names should be used everywhere. Programmers who claim that it's too much typing need to either take a typing lesson or hope that I never need to maintain their code.
Gus Gustafson
If a block of cohesive code has several levels of nesting and a variable name is used in most of them, it is nice to be able to fit your block of code into a single screen so you can see everything without scrolling back and forth. I sometimes use small variable names for better readability. A comment can always clear up the intended use of the local variable.
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If a block of cohesive code has several levels of nesting and a variable name is used in most of them, it is nice to be able to fit your block of code into a single screen so you can see everything without scrolling back and forth. I sometimes use small variable names for better readability. A comment can always clear up the intended use of the local variable.
"For better readability" is the key to your statement. Better readability is a prerequisite to better understanding. And better understanding is directly related to maintainability. Now consider for a moment that a maintainer is visiting your code for the first time. A couple of things: the maintainer may not recognize your algorithm and the maintainer may not know your coding style. So the easier it is for the maintainer to understand your code, the faster the error (why else a maintainer?) will be corrected. Meaningful variable names help. In short loops, I have no problem with small variable names, but only for integer indices, not for statements like foreach ( Address address in addresses ).... Once the form foreach ( Address a in addresses )... is allowed, bad things happen to understanding.
Gus Gustafson
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"For better readability" is the key to your statement. Better readability is a prerequisite to better understanding. And better understanding is directly related to maintainability. Now consider for a moment that a maintainer is visiting your code for the first time. A couple of things: the maintainer may not recognize your algorithm and the maintainer may not know your coding style. So the easier it is for the maintainer to understand your code, the faster the error (why else a maintainer?) will be corrected. Meaningful variable names help. In short loops, I have no problem with small variable names, but only for integer indices, not for statements like foreach ( Address address in addresses ).... Once the form foreach ( Address a in addresses )... is allowed, bad things happen to understanding.
Gus Gustafson
"the maintainer may not recognize your algorithm and the maintainer may not know your coding style ... Meaningful variable names help." I have no disagreement with you that meaningful variable names help. Other helpful things might take priority in some corner cases. The scenario I thought of for shorter names was when you have many levels of nesting, hence lots of indentation outside the top of the code. In that scenario you either have unwieldly continuation lines that break up a SOC into many pieces that it won't fit on a screen without scrolling vertically, or you have long lines that require horizontal scrolling back and forth. Some comment lines, as I said, might be an alternative to the descriptiveness of long variable names and let you take in the block of code without your eye having to wander across broken lines or long lines. "Readability" can, of course, be different for different people. Maybe the majority of maintainers would side with you in all cases.
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One the biggest gripes I have with 'meaningful' names is their utility. What is the justification for having a 122 character variable name describing a boolean? Microsoft used to have such describing whether the screensaver was in blackout mode. There used to be a condition where the software would concatenate program.procedure.variable names and attempt to display the result in a 256 character namespace. If the concatenation exceeded the namespace limit, 'namespace_exceeded' would be displayed in place of the concatenation and debugging would be terminated. (Those were the days.)
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
I use VS6. I know. Try using STL and be prepared for an avalanche of warnings... Maybe my definition of long is way shorter than 122 chars - that's just madness. 15 chars IS long and useful - also if the code is properly modularized and splitted in functions (or classes and methods, or libraries and procedures or whatever paradigm you are using) long names lose most of their significance: in a smaller sontext shorter names are just as useful.
Geek code v 3.12 { GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- r++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X } If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver