Re: Choosing proper object names (was: Long names are doom ?)

[Ray Blaak <blaak@infomatch.com>]

Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com> writes:
> If you come across the declaration:
> 
> Thread_List : Singly_Linked_List;
> 
> ..it tells you a lot more relevent information than:
> 
> Thread_List : Thread_Lists;

More information yes, but to me this is information that the client should
*not* be aware of when using it, ideally speaking.

What the client should be aware of is that Thread_Lists (or Thread_List --
that is not my point here) is a container of threads such that one can get the
first one, maybe the last, and the next. Whether that is single or doubly
linked or even linked at all should be irrelevant to the client.

That is, plural or not, the name should indicate what the object is,
abstractly speaking, not how it is implemented.

With regards to plurality, what guides me is if the name indicates accurately
how can something be used. Do you have a list of threads or a list of thread
lists? If the former than my preference is for:

  Pending_Threads : Threads;

That is, I try to avoid the use of things like "List" in a type name, so as to
free myself from dependencies on a particular implementation. (e.g. what it is
changed to a hash table or array or something? "List" would be confusing to
maintainers). But I do have a collection of threads, accessible somehow, and
that is the important point.

-- 
Cheers,                                        The Rhythm is around me,
                                               The Rhythm has control.
Ray Blaak                                      The Rhythm is inside me,
blaak@infomatch.com                            The Rhythm has my soul.