From: Tim Bates <tim@...>
Date: 2003-05-27T21:35:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Project Directory Structure

On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 08:06:33PM +0900, Simon Strandgaard wrote:
> 3 letter abbreviations is NOT good practice :-)

I beg to differ.

3 letter abbreviations USED TO BE good practise, because disk reads took
in the order of seconds and users doing a directory listing wanted to
load as few blocks from the disk as possible, which is achieved by making
the directory/command/file names as short as possible (eg usr, ls and
fstab).*

3 letter abbreviations are CURRENTLY good practise because standards are
good practise and those have been the standards for a long time. It is
far better, IMO, to put out the newbies for a short time while they get
a grasp on these cryptic names than it is to put out everyone else for a
long time while they change their long-standing habits.

Or, as someone I know once put it, there's a world shortage of
keystrokes and you should do all you can to conserve them.

* Short for "user", "list" and "file system table".

Tim Bates
-- 
tim@bates.id.au