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From: adam@cunixc.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,sci.lang
Subject: Re: History: foo and fubar are unrelated
Message-ID: <230@cunixc.columbia.edu>
Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 00:06:07 EST
Article-I.D.: cunixc.230
Posted: Fri Nov  6 00:06:07 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 10:13:21 EST
References: <1266@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK> <1632@chinet.UUCP>
Reply-To: adam@cunixc.columbia.edu (Adam (Cat) J. Kucznetsov)
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: Are you kidding?
Lines: 82
Keywords: Psychology, memory, junk names, homonyms, reading, writing
Xref: utgpu news.misc:947 comp.misc:1393 sci.lang:1553
Summary: Diverges completely from the original subject...

[I directed followups to sci.lang because this article wanders a bit
 from news discussion.]

It's been interesting reading the arguments about which junk
file names/metasyntactics/whatever people use, but I was particularly
interested by the short argument about which ones were faster to type,
which brought forth such examples as ffff, asdfjkl, etc. 

I do not use that sort of name, ever. Usually when I am using a junk
filename or variable I want to keep track of what it is, at least for a
short time, and I think the slight typing-speed benefits of amorphous
combinations of home keys and so on are overshadowed by a measure of
difficulty in remembering exactly what was used when you need it again.
This especially applies to series of junk names. It's not too hard to
remember asdf, but if I need four temporary placeholders I usually
resort to the venerable series "foo, bar, baz, quux" of old-hacker fame.
By now I am so familiar with it, having read with a kind of unearned
nostalgia all those ai-lab documents from Before My Time, that it is
quite automatic and no strain on my memory.

That series is particularly useful in describing algorithms, which lisp
hackers like me do a great deal. "You have foo, and foo calls bar with
variables A and B, and bar swaps the locs, but this is real lisp, so...
and..." that sort of thing. Usually the metas stand for functions and
ordinary letters are used for variables.

When I need to assign filenames I often resort to weird-sounding names,
which I remember >by virtue< of their weirdness. (Foo, bar, etc. almost
never are filenames by me.) On-the-spot sort of things like blep,
splatter, crabbaz, dogma, woof, dorm, sping, tworp, gobble, ting, hogy,
rilke, tasma, frod, and stabbot come to mind. (All names in my delete log
file.)  Notice that they are mostly reasonably pronounceable and
transcribable; I have a good "sound" memory (no, I am >not< ashamed to
admit it -- my visual ain't bad either) and am very likely to remember
what something sounded like before the letter sequence I typed, so this
is an efficient system for me.

I have a feeling that I'd be quite slowed down if I used names like
"ffff" and so on. I just about never make spelling mistakes, in any
language, >once I have learned (or believe I have learned) what a word
sounds like.< This is true even for words which sound nothing like they
look, which is what seems a little puzzling. And it holds when my
pronunciation is completely wrong, so long as I have one.  I suppose in
some sense I must "file" my words away primarily "by sound," as opposed
to by visual pattern. On the other hand I read and write (well, type)
very quickly, certainly not "sounding out" each word as I go along.
>Until I slow down.< When I slow my writing, or reading, to puzzle
over a point, I do in fact sound out the words in my mind.

And, now that I think about it --

When I type dictation, I occasionally type a homonym of the word I just
heard, even if I have been following the content as I go along (and thus
know in some sense which word is required.) I am backspacing to correct
the error before I even am conscious of it. Recently I have been doing
that even when typing while composing. (Which is how I write; I never
handwrite -- much too slow, I forget what I was thinking. I need to
write at a rate comparable to measured speech. On the other hand I, and
almost all people I know, can not compose poetry when typing. This is a
demonstration of the essential difference between poetry and
non-poetry.) But I find it interesting that, as I get used to
typing/composing faster and faster, homonym problems sometimes pop up.

One interesting point is that I have a pretty good musical memory;
perfect pitch, etc. This never helped me much in playing but I do wonder
strongly if it's a related factor.

Sorry if this long article, which diverges completely from the original
point, has bored you all to death. I'd love to hear from other people
the experiences, thoughts, personal quirks etc. in this area. It's a
fascinating subject, of course, when you start noticing "restrictions"
or patterns in the way your own mind works, though most of the
speculation I've heard is a bit too mechanistic for my taste. That's why
I felt a bit funny above about writing about the brain "filing away"
things under sound -- I'm not used to that sort of view.

cat
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