From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f8c65,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8c65,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,f292779560fb8442 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,af40e09e753872c X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 1008e3,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1008e3,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public From: Graham Perkins Subject: Slander (was: Hungarian notation) Date: 1996/05/22 Message-ID: <31A31739.2BE0@dmu.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 156108844 references: <31999F43.41C67EA6@scn.de> <319D2278.3F9A@netonecom.net> <4nr50r$jo2@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> <4nsgct$c3l@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: De Montfort University mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2,comp.edu,comp.lang.eiffel x-mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Win16; I) Date: 1996-05-22T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bob Rodgers wrote: > nreitzel@lonestar.jpl.utsa.edu (Norman L. Reitzel ) wrote: > >it does it is an error waiting to happen. The rude concept of > >"self-documenting" code belongs in an ivory tower with those who teach, > >not in the trenches with those of us who DO. > > Well, we agree here. Please desist this slander. The teaching of good software design and development practices is a difficult business and there is little universal agreement on what those concepts include, never mind how best to teach them. Academia does try hard to deliver. It may be unfortunate that there are some teachers with lower software expertise who get dumped with some introductory programming teaching on the assumption that those with the thinnest background should be given the "easiest" end of the subject to teach. However there is plenty of that in industry too, with actual coding and code maintenance often being left to the most junior staff with narrowest experience. But I am not particularly interested in the huge amount of bad commercial development that comes to light, except as object lessons in what to avoid. A glance through a few journals, magazines, and conference proceedings will soon show up the huge contribution made to commercial software development by intelligent and hard-working people working in academia, industry, or both. These newsgroups will just become cluttered with insult-trading if we seek every instance of poor practice and publicly slag it, especially if we then tar a whole group with the same brush. As for Hungarian notation, academics like myself are quite capable of taking the helpful aspects (careful analysis of semantic structure of data space, careful structuring of namespace to aid the reader's understanding of the data space) and dropping those specific recommendations which seem designed to assist assembler language programmers. It then becomes interesting to look at different languages and their environments to see how much direct support they give for organising naming schemes and how much you have to introduce via comments, name prefix/postfix, or special tools. > > The rude concept of > > "self-documenting" code belongs in an ivory tower Presumably this should be "crude" not "rude". The concept of *totally* self-documenting code belongs nowhere. Perhaps the poster has facilely misninterpreted recommendations to place meaningful information in source code to aid the reader as a diktat to avoid other forms of documentation.