From: Ron Jeffries <ronjeffries@...>
Date: 2002-01-15T23:33:05+09:00
Subject: Re: Small Methods - a ramble

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002 13:12:02 GMT, Chris "boris" Ross
<chris@darkrock.co.uk> wrote:

>My teacher at school alway wittered on about meaningful identifiers (this was
>in pascal) and so I then made a point to make each variable name 256
>characters. He was less than pleased - but it was readable
>BecauseWeHadToWriteThemLikeThis :) But even to this day I still stick to
>hacking out a method using bad identifiers and then go back and give them the
>correct names (once I actually know what they are for) - most people seem to
>forget the second step =P

Maybe sometimes even /you/ forget the next step: I know I do.

So as I program, I think about what I'm intending to do. If I'm
intending to create a variable that contains all interesting file names,
I call it something like interestingFileNames or interestingNames or at
least fileNames.

I find that focusing on my intention makes my code better, and writing
down my intention makes it less necessary to clean up after.

Regards,

Ronald E Jeffries
http://www.XProgramming.com
http://www.objectmentor.com
I'm giving the best advice I have. You get to decide whether it's true for you.