Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!ENG.SUN.COM!Mitch.Bradley
From: Mitch.Bradley@ENG.SUN.COM
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Forth Style
Message-ID: <9105201330.AA15901@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 16 May 91 23:52:57 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: Mitch.Bradley%ENG.SUN.COM@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 30

> The names should be choosen carefully so that the resulting modules "say"
> what they do.  Some of this comes from internal naming conventions
> (i.e. "/" means initialize, ">" means pointer to..., etc.), but most
> comes from imaginitive vocabularies (i.e. a thesaurus).

I believe that imaginative names contribute to the "poetic beauty" of
Forth code, but often make it the code harder to understand.  For
instance, consider the word "JOT".  JOT is the name of the number
conversion buffer in Zen Forth.

When I first saw some code with that word in it, I though "that's an
amusing word; I wonder what the @#$% it does?".  If the word had instead
been NUMBER-BUF, I would have known exactly what it does, and I wouldn't
have had to spend time looking it up.  NUMBER-BUF has no poetic beauty,
but any idiot immediately knows exactly what it does.

Words which are used a lot should have terse names.  Words which are
used infrequently should have very-descriptive names.

"Cuteness" contributes to Forth's reputation as a difficult-to-read
language.

The problem with short English words is that they tend to have several
meanings, none of which is entirely descriptive of any particular
programming language function.

Names should indeed be very carefully chosen, but in most cases,
precision and clarity is more important than "prettiness".

Mitch.Bradley@Eng.Sun.COM