Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!ken
From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Readable names
Message-ID: <8027@sol.ARPA>
Date: 24 Mar 88 20:53:08 GMT
References: <2857@enea.se> <2779@mmintl.UUCP> <2899@enea.se> <3125@pitt.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 16

Readable identifiers are a good thing, if we can decide on how long the
name should be :-).

But to me, clarity and correctness of the algorithm is just as, or even
more important. I would rather have a simple, efficient, reliable
algorithm that has short identifiers than a baroque, marginal hack with
lots of special cases that don't work, even if the programmer wrote an
essay on his algorithm.

I can edit the short names with global substitutions but I don't want
to understand or fix broken algorithms if I can avoid them. My
experience has been that it was usually the contortions in dusty deck
FORTRAN codes that frustrated me rather than the 6 max character
identifiers.

	Ken