Good or bad, it works.
Keep in mind that I don't do this with client work or anything that might land on the hands of another developer.
double anospic; // average numbers picked
The Ruby convention would be to write out the variable with underscores anyway, just sayin'.
Generally, I find that long names fall into three categories:
1) refactoring opportunities
Use more namespaces, write smaller functions, embrace lexical scoping, etc. You don't need to call something a foo-bar-frobber when it's being used in the foo-bar context, just call it a frobber.
2) line noise
If you're only using the frobber within a two line function, and it is initialized via create-frobber, do you really need to spell it out? f or x will do. If your function grows, rename the variable. Or refactor!
3) an absentee synonym
Maybe you've got a monster-which-attempts-to-defeat-player, when you really need a baddie. Or maybe the word you need doesn't exist yet? It's rare, but sometimes you really do need to invent or repurpose a word.
...
I always feel dirty when I have a long variable name. pg writes about this in On Lisp: long names feel heavier. They might be super cheap to call, but because the name is long, you're less likely to call it.
Furthermore, I much rather adhere to a line length limit, as I find wrapping lines far harder to read than lines with short variable names. Long names makes this harder.
All that said, I almost never use abbreviations other than standin variables like a single letter. The only exception to this is well known abbreviations, like for your most commonly used utility functions or for objects which are extremely common in your problem domain. Such a set of abbreviations becomes a part of the language you share between your compiler and your team.
Why would you just not give it a reasonable name to begin with? Why not call your variable frobber? The only possible reason for not doing so is that you're using an editor that makes you type it every single time. I insist that calling your Frobber variable frobber is strictly easier to understand than f or x. Why not t? Or sdfsdg? None of them make any sense to someone reading the code, and it increases the amount the reader of the code has to keep in their short-term memory, making it more challenging to understand.
pg writes about this in On Lisp: long names feel heavier. They might be super cheap to call, but because the name is long, you're less likely to call it.
Even if pg wrote it this is patently absurd, and it's endemic in lisp code which contributes greatly to the famously write-only nature of lisp. Again, if you're using a decent editor, there is no reason to call your UserDetails object anything but user-details (or maybe details if you're in a context only relating to users).
Here's some C:
for (int player_index = 0; player_index < players.length; player_index++) {
int rank = player_index + 1;
render_score(rank, players[player_index].name);
}
for (int p = 0; p < players.length; p++) {
int rank = p + 1;
render_score(rank, players[p].name);
}
If this code were to start to grow, and the definition of p and its usages start to grow appart, it's trivial to replace.... but it's probably better for you to refactor.
Um... Because that would be hard to read?
I'm advocating using full words in general, avoiding long variables (multi-word phrases, adjectives, contextualization, etc), and not being afraid of short variables names if they help, rather than hurt readability.
There are plenty of cases where short names are totally fine. If you've got a module full of string utilities and every single function takes a first argument of type String, why not just call it "s"? Everyone will figure it out in seconds and it will save the mental overhead of differentiating "String" and "string". when that does come up.
Things like that; I'm saying use your judgement.
I agree with this part and code this way.
>line noise
I generally follow this, it depends on how clear the abbreviation is. If I would need a comment I'll spell out the name instead.
>I always feel dirty when I have a long variable name.
Once it passes a certain size, I do too.
>pg writes about this in On Lisp: long names feel heavier.
This is something I strongly disagree with pg on and I would point to arch as prove that he's wrong here. Arch uses ridiculously short names for everything and I personally can't stand the language. As far as I can tell, the language never got popular despite a decent sized group of people waiting to see what pg would make.
>They might be super cheap to call, but because the name is long, you're less likely to call it.
I think pg arrives at this position because he uses vi. If you have a really nice IDE that does advanced code completion (e.g. I can type "RBV <tab>" for ReallyBigVariable) you'll find that you're no less likely to use a long variable or function name.
>Furthermore, I much rather adhere to a line length limit,
Agreed.