On the Naming of Variables
Sometimes I hate trying to name things in my programs. I work hard to try to come up with really descriptive, clear, standardized names since I think that it makes the programs much easier to understand. My programs may be a bit more verbose than some but they also tend to read pretty well. Besides, long names are why we have M-/ in Emacs.
Sometimes the right name is immediately apparent and it just jumps out and writes itself into the code. Other times, it's rather difficult. I know the Extreme Programming folks talk about finding metaphors as descriptions for what a program is supposed to do. Admittedly naming something in a program is pretty much a matter of finding a metaphor for that entity. But it feels like sometimes, even when you know what the metaphor for something should be, it still doesn't quite feel right as a name. I think sometimes there's more overlap between writing good prose and writing good code than we programmers will admit. In both cases just finding the right word can be a challenging struggle.
This evening I'd planned to do some refactoring in my renderer and merge a pair of classes together. I'm happy with what I plan to call the new class but was stopped in my tracks trying to thing of a name by which the references to the instances should be propagated around. Oh well, I'd rather take a little more time to think it through and get it right.
Sometimes the right name is immediately apparent and it just jumps out and writes itself into the code. Other times, it's rather difficult. I know the Extreme Programming folks talk about finding metaphors as descriptions for what a program is supposed to do. Admittedly naming something in a program is pretty much a matter of finding a metaphor for that entity. But it feels like sometimes, even when you know what the metaphor for something should be, it still doesn't quite feel right as a name. I think sometimes there's more overlap between writing good prose and writing good code than we programmers will admit. In both cases just finding the right word can be a challenging struggle.
This evening I'd planned to do some refactoring in my renderer and merge a pair of classes together. I'm happy with what I plan to call the new class but was stopped in my tracks trying to thing of a name by which the references to the instances should be propagated around. Oh well, I'd rather take a little more time to think it through and get it right.