Re: Why (or not) use single letter variable names?

From: Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz (spamtrap_at_library.lspace.org.invalid)
Date: 12/15/04 

Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:45:54 -0500

In <EuSdnbZEZM1s5iDcRVn-qA@rcn.net>, on 12/13/2004
   at 10:46 AM, jmfbahciv@aol.com said:

>Some of the programmers I worked with (a long time ago) could type 60
>words/minute.

So little of the time involved in programming is spend writing the
actual code that the difference between, e.g., 12 wpm and 120 wpm is
irrelevant. Programmers typically use long names for two reasons:

 1. Local policy requires structured names

 2. They believe the resulting code to be more readable.

>The reason people use these things is to avoid documenting what
>they do.

The choice of names is an important part of the documentation. That
does not, of course, reduce the need for other documentation.

>A programmer who knows his biz will not have to read the purpose of
>a variable every time he needs to reference it in his code.

A programmer who knows his business will chose names that remind the
reader of their purpose. 

-- 
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT  <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
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