Older C compilers would truncate a variable name if it was too long, so
VeryLongGlobalConstantInsideALibraryInSecondsmight accidentally collide withVeryLongGlobalConstantInsideALibraryInMinutes.Legend says that they used to do it after a single letter with Dennis declaring “26 variables ought to be enough for anyone”.
I had this problem in my job as a drafter. I was wondering why the hell Tekla would complain about the same object name already being in use despite everything having its own name. took me way too long to realize there wad some stupidly max name length and the program did nothing to alarm the user about trying to put too long name. it just cut the overflow away.
No, that’s math.
Just be careful naming your function “stdout()” or things could get weird…
Or Fortran variables that collide with Fortran built-in functions.
Keep in mind that array subscript and function call are both () in Fortran.
An important professor constantly and frustratingly said
we can call this variable whatever we want, so we’ll call it
FredMade me panic and irate and focus on the wrong part of the problem. Every. Single. Time.
I present to you quality variable names. (and a Mount Rustmore)
(Reconfigure(f), 'c') => { let mut p: Vec<&str> = vec![]; loop { match args.next() { Some(k) => { if k == "=" { match args.next() { None => q("need value for Rc"), Some(v) => u( f, |f| Box::new( |c| { f(c); c.set(p.iter().copied(), v); for e in p { unsafe { Box::<str>::from_raw( std::mem::transmute(e) ); } } } ) ) }; break } else { p.push(Box::leak(k.into())); } } None => error("need path element or = for Rc"), } } },what is this for ?
Argument parsing; turning
Rcfoo=barintoReconfigure(|c| c.foo = "bar").
name your function as
malloc()and see to world burn and generate bugs at factorial rate.If you name it malloc it will be easy to notice. On the other hand if you call it free…
for whatever in stuff:
for myList in myElement:
You need to use trigger warnings for this kind of shit.
Why is no one giving credit to my friend
n?!I worked with a developer who insisted on using the shortest names possible. God I hated debugging his code.
I’m talking variable names like AAxynj. Everything looking like matrix math.
At a previous job I had to work with an old database where all the tables and columns had 6-character names
shortest names possible
This film from 1975 is still relevant today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hdJQkn8rtA
I vomit whenever I have to read one letter alias SQL. And then… I dealias it.
I don’t understand why people think that it’s acceptable.
As developers, we’ve had it drummed into us from day one that variable names are important and shouldn’t be one or two letters.
Yet developers deliberately alias an easy to read table name such as “customer” into “c” because that’s the first letter of the table. I’m sure that it’s more work to do that with auto completion meaning that you don’t even need to type out “customer”.
Especially when you also have
companyandcountytables. It forces people to look up what the c is aliased to before beginning to comprehend what you’re doing.
Ah, must’ve been a fortran developer. I swear they have this ability to make the shortest yet the least memorable variable names. E.g. was the variable called APFLWS or APFLWD? Impossible to remember without going back and forth to recheck the definition. Autocomplete won’t help you because both variables exist.
He did write some Fortran in his past! What made you think it was Fortran influence?
I’d say because fortran is often used for calculations such as numerical analysis where you have x, y and z for example.
I have written fortran code in the past and it was mainly for that.
Your first few programming languages usually influence you the most for the rest of your career.
72 characters per line/card.
And you can write more than six characters, but only the first six are recognized. So APFLWSAC and APFLWSAF are really the same variable.
And without namespaces, company policy reserves the first two characters for module prefix and Hungarian notation.
It took me too long to figure out the I in an if statement was just integer
In a for statement, it often refers to index
installing operating system: 15 minutes, give or take.
give a name to the computer: 45 minutes
I’ve got that shit on lockdown man.
I name all my devices “Fuck0ff” followed by a 3 letter descriptor of what it is. E.g. - my windows install is Fuck0ffDTW for Desktop Windows, my Garuda install is Fuck0ffDTG for Desktop Garuda(it’s a flavour of Arch, btw)What if you would have 2 devices of same type with same OS or just with OS that starts with same letter? Will you use numbers, if yes, how much leading zeroes if any you will use? If you don’t use numbers, will you add a room name? But what if there are 2 devices with same OS in the same room?
Luckily I’m not responsible for naming my wife’s devices, otherwise the whole scheme would be up shit creak. As it stands I have a dual-boot desktop, a daily laptop, a surface pro4, and an old laptop running Ubuntu server for various self hosted stuff. I’ve managed to just use 3 letters, I assume as I amass more tech I’ll need to start adding numbers, if I have to label for rooms I’ll have more than a data hording problem.
Single character variable names are my pet peeve. I even name iterator variables a real word instead of “i” now… (although writing the OG low level for loops is kinda rare for me now)
Naming things “x”… shudder. Well, the entire world is getting to see how that idea transpires hahah
X, y, and z should only be used when working with things with dimensions larger than 1. Indexing into a 2D array, x and y are great uses. I’m also totally fine with i and j for indexer/iterator when appropriate, but I hate when people try to make short variable names for no good reason. We have auto-complete just about everywhere now. Make the names descriptive. There’s literally no reason not to.
deleted by creator
Everywhere CIVILIZED*
Vim can have autocomplete.
I hate short variable names in general too, but am okay with them for iterators where i and j represent only indices, and when x/y/z represent coordinates (like a for loop going over x coordinates). In most cases I actually prefer this since it keeps me from having to think about whether I’m looking at an integer iterator or object/dictionary iterator loop, as long as the loop remains short. When it gets to be ridiculous in size, even i and j are annoying. Any other short names are a no go for me though. And my god, the abbreviations… Those are the worst.
That’s very reasonable, I can get behind that. (my stance is a partly irrational overreaction and I’m totally aware of it lol)
Abbreviations are definitely annoying. My least favourite thing to do with them is “Hungarian notation”. It’s like… in a statically typed context it’s useless, and in a dynamically typed context it’s like… kind of a sign you need to refactor
Hungarian notation makes sense in a dynamically typed usage (which I despise, but this essentially makes them notationally typed at least) or where you’re editor/IDE is so simple it can’t give you more information, which I can’t see ever being the case in the modern day.
Same, except for list comprehension in python, I prefer sinlge character var names there.
^- triggered
There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things.
And off by one errors
And DNS issues
Yeah, there are 2 hard things.
0: off by one errors 1: cache invalidation 2: naming things
You should really be naming all your variables by generating 64 character (minimum) random strings.
Make it 63 (31?) to align with what C99 can distinguish.
Also: I really like unicode in identifiers. So if at all possible don’t just have a random string of letters and numbers, make sure to include greek letters and all the funny emojis. (I just forgot which languages and compilers etc allow that.)
For extra fun, you can name your variables using solely Unicode invisible characters (e.g. non-breaking space) so they’re impossible to visually distinguish
Wingdings as well
Wingdings is a font and has no effect on the actual code. Only people who set their IDE font to wingdings will see wingdings
Remove all fonts from the devs computers except for Wingdings and Webdings.
Who needs private variables when you can generate cryptographically secure variable names? Much better security.
