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Comment by prezjordan | Hacker News Reader

The number of seconds per hour probably won't change, but repeating `// seconds per hour` as a comment everywhere you use the number 3600 seems a little silly when you can just use a constant.

The next programmer doesn't need to see those digits at all, they're nothing but a distraction.

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Agreed. I much prefer the latter, as it tells me not only the value, but the intention.

newTime = currentMillis + 21600000,

I go WTF is that number and is it right,

newTime = currentMillis + SIX_HOURS_IN_MILLIS

and I not only know at a glance what you're doing, I know what the value ought to be, so if you accidentally added/left out a zero, I can actually check it where that const is declared.

Or, in a more reusable/flexible way:

  newTime = currentMillis + 6 * HOUR_IN_MILLIS

But an even cleaner solution would be to just use the date/time library for this (depending on the language, of course):

  newTime = currentMillis + TimeSpan.FromHours(6).Milliseconds;

Why six hours? This definitely needs another constant.

This is exactly where the BS starts. So what are you doing next, FIVE_HOURS_IN_MILLIS? Should we do the whole range?

More importantly: Why 6 hours?

The comment by bluefinity gets it right. HOURS_IN_MILLISECONDS is ok, but don't "constant" everything.

Certainly. Though it may be that you only have a single offset due to whatever business rules, and you never use HOURS_IN_MILLISECONDS, it's always either 6*HOURS_IN_MILLISECONDS or some other term. I didn't want to have to think of an actual domain case, but just show an example of when having a clear, named constant rather than a, yes, unchanging, but ultimately not intuitive and easy to get wrong value, is a better choice; I readily admit you can run that down further once you have a real domain. :P

Smalltalk:

newTime := currentMillis + 6 hours asMilliseconds.

I think you're making the point of the parent commenter, which is that getting a bunch of devs to agree on the 'best' way to write code ends up in a nitpicking session.

That's been my experience. I've yet to work on or with a team that has been able to resolve the concept of a consistent coding standard.

> but repeating `// seconds per hour` as a comment everywhere you use the number 3600 seems a little silly when you can just use a constant

Yes, so if it's only one case you can have the comment

Now, if you're doing it a lot of times I bet your problem is bigger than just adding a constant, it may be even better to turn this into a function so you do to_seconds(time_in_hours) or something

Personally, I think it's the "repeating" part that is important - if you use it once then have 3600 explained with a comment, if for some reason you use the same 3600 a lot in a chunk of code make it a sensibly named constant.

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