Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!yale!husc6!cca!g-rh
From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Readable names
Message-ID: <25668@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 18 Mar 88 04:23:33 GMT
References: <2318@bsu-cs.UUCP> <2835@enea.se> <1810@sics.se> <25548@cca.CCA.COM> <2857@enea.se>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 41

In article <2857@enea.se> sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog) writes:

	... My note arguing against long names deleted
>
>The examples I had in my article were of course extreme examples to
>illustrate my point about case shifts. If your note was directed against 
>such extremes, I agree with you. 

	Not really, although I think we can both agree that 30 character
	names are undesirable.

> But if you mean to imply that NumOfAcc would be better than 
>NumberOfAccidents, I have to object. NumOfAcc is harder to remember, 
>since I have to remember the exact abbreviation too. (Your first argument 
>may still be valid, though. Particulary if it is a freqeuntly used name.)

	I agree that NumOfAcc is worse than NumberOfAccidents.  There
are human factor studies that back this up.  Ordinarily.  There are a
few shops that use a standard dictionary of abbreviations that is used
as a coding standard.  In such a shop you would know that NumOfAcc is
NumberOfAccidents because Num is the standard abreviation for Number and
Acc is the standard abreviation for Accidents.  Standardized abbreviations
are a big win.  (This has been backed up with studies.)

	However that was not what I meant -- I meant na or nac instead
of NumberOfAccidents, coupled, of course, with clear documentation of
what na, et. al. mean.  I will grant that na is not as menmonic as
NumberOfAccidents.  However I have tried it both ways and my conclusion
is that the short form works better (others may feel differently).  The
name is a symbol; I only need to find out what it means once; I don't
need to be told what it means everytime that I see it.  The long name
is, in effect, a redundancy that increase the noise level in a program.

	As I say, this is just my experience.  I went through a "long
descriptive names" are beautiful phase, and came up saying, no they're
not.  I can well believe that they work well for some people.  
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.