this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Programming

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[โ€“] onlinepersona@programming.dev 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I agree with part of the article, because I didn't read the rest. I truly dislike the use of single letter variable names: f, g, h and foo, bar, baz. My advice: use descriptive variable names.

function twoIfs, function complicatedIf, var simpleAnd, etc. Makes it so much easier to read examples instead of remembering "oh yeah, f had two ifs in it, h had the if/else, g calls f which calls h which,...".

Also see this often in other examples: "A for 'Truthy variable' " ๐Ÿ˜“ Wtf. Laziness is good when it makes things easier, not harder.

[โ€“] lysdexic@programming.dev -5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

My advice: use descriptive variable names.

The article is really not about naming conventions.

[โ€“] Sheldan@programming.dev 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Should have still used them. It was harder to read this way.

[โ€“] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago

I even thought that this (hardness) was intended to emphasize the way it's hard to spot problems in real codebase ๐Ÿ˜…

[โ€“] potterman28wxcv@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago

Agreed that some people can find it easier with explicit names - however some people find it easier with short meaningless names as it makes them focus on the abstraction rather than the naming. There is no right or wrong here. It all depends on the reader.

[โ€“] lysdexic@programming.dev -5 points 11 months ago

Should have still used them. It was harder to read this way.

The blog author is literally using de-facto standard for placeholder names.

The var names used by the author are perfectly fine. They don't cause any issue, nor do they make things hard to read.

[โ€“] onlinepersona@programming.dev 9 points 11 months ago

Doesn't matter, it's hard to read an article. If it were hard to read for another reason like bad grammar, I'd comment on that too ๐Ÿคท