Re: Long names are doom ?

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

Using plurals for type names and singulars for object names can work - but
not always. When I've got a variable that counts up how many of something
I've got, the name naturally wants to reflect that. (Something like
Ripe_Oranges : Integer;) Seeing the plural name under your suggested
convention would lead one to think it is a type name - at least on cursory
inspection or without context. (Ripe_Oranges := Ripe_Oranges + 1; is not
likely to get confused as a type name...)

I tend to use "_Type" at the end of type names - but that is a bit long and
itself subject to confusion or ludicrous afectations. (Sometimes you want an
object called "Message_Type" & then have to go invent some name like
"Message_Category" or violate your convention. And of course
"Message_Type_Type" for the type name looks awfully silly!)

I've never seen a convention that I *really* liked and didn't have problems.
Probably like source code formatting (the great "Capital versus Lower Case
Debate", anyone?) it is probably best to write one down and then stick to
it. Consistency being more important than the exact details of the naming
convention.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen" <revbob@the.rectory> wrote in message
news:Xns90B35A5F54A70revbob@207.126.101.100...
>
> Ages and ages ago, I suggested to the editors of Ada Quality and
> Style (as part of the public comment process) that they use the
> following convention:
>
>     type Dogs is (German_Shepherd, Sheep_Dog, Dog_Pound_Dog);
>     Dog : Dogs;
>
> That is, plural for type names, singular for object names.  You'd be
> surprised how often that works out.  The editors even adopted it as
> their recommendation in an early edition of AQ&S.
>
> Evidently some CS professor types were aghast at the simplicity of this
> proposal, and a later version of AQ&S changed it to something like
> "abstract words for type names, specific words for object names" --
> advice that's impossible to understand, much less follow.
>
> I found this culture clash perfectly understandable: I'd come from an
> engineering background, so type names like Amperes and Foot_Pounds came
> naturally.  And too, I had the requirement to produce large volumes of
> maintainable code.  CS professors are, in my experience, strangers to
> both those things.  I'm sure there are some dazzling exceptions to this
> observation, but all the ones I've met couldn't even get their arms
> around the notion that at the end of the day, the sumbitch had to WORK.
>
> Nowadays, I'd probably use My_Dog as the object identifier, but the
> good old plural as a type name is still a perfectly good convention,
> imho.
>
> Alas, in C and C++ all the really interesting stuff is in the type or
> class definitions, and the name you give x in x->foo[i].bar doesn't
> make much difference.
> --
> Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen
> crispen at hiwaay dot net
>
> "We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of
> duct tape, and a car battery."