Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!decwrl!shelby!labrea!cdp!jeff
From: jeff@cdp.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Experiences with Hungarian Nami
Message-ID: <138300001@cdp>
Date: 26 Aug 89 14:00:33 GMT
References: <489@fdmetd.uucp>
Lines: 16
Nf-ID: #R:fdmetd.uucp:489:cdp:138300001:000:756
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jeff    Aug 25 23:49:00 1989


Hungarian notation is being promoted by the Microsoft folks as the
best thing since sliced bread.  But there's a sad (funny?) side
to this: Hungarian notation flies in the face of what we've been
trying to teach and practice for years with the notions of information
hiding and abstraction.  Hungarian notation encodes the type of each
primitive data object into the name of the object.  The loss of
abstraction should be obvious: for example, changing the underlying
implementation of a variable requires that its name also be changed.

I'm not familiar with the environment at Microsoft -- it's conceivable
that this is truly one step forward for them -- but for many of us,
it's one big step backwards.

        Jeff Dean
        uunet!pyramid!cdp!jeff