Re: not enough real programmers?

[Steve@XXX_REMOVE_XXXrsn-tech.demon.co.uk (Steve Rencontre)]

On Wed, 11 Aug 1999 20:36:54 +0200, in <6sfso7.flp.ln@hex.athome.de>
Olav Woelfelschneider <wosch@cardware.de> wrote:

>Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net> wrote:
>PS> PeopleNoun PNWho VerbLitter TheirAdjective NounCode PrepWith
>PS> AdditionalAdjective ClutterNoun // note subordinate clause // AreVerb
>PS> WastingGerund ArticleA LotNoun PrepOf NounTime.
>
>At last! I always thought I was alone with that opinion.
>
>For an example of badly littered code, see MFC source as shipped with
>MS VC++. No wonder MS stuff always crashes, people have no time fixing
>bugs because the have to wade through code that looks like this.

Indeed. My personal contention is that the single biggest reason NT
drivers are considered 'difficult' is the extraordinarily bad MS house
style in which the examples are written.

>I prefer short variable names, especially for short lived ones. To
>compensate, I like to comment very much. Use common sense!

To me, the complexity of a name is a subtle indicator of its scope.
The shorter the name, the more local. 'i' is maybe a loop index, with
no meaning outside the loop (except possibly testing its final value);
'checksum' has probably functional scope, and is something significant
in the function's context; 'internal_operation' is likely to be a
static with file scope; and 'sys_TaskQueue' is a global.
--
Steve Rencontre, Design Consultant
http://www.rsn-tech.demon.co.uk/  --  remember to despam return address