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> the variable has to be given a meaningful name, which is annoying Not naming the variable is annoying to everyone except the original programmer. Variable n
by thrtythreeforty 2y ago
> the variable has to be given a meaningful name, which is annoying
Not naming the variable is annoying to everyone except the original programmer. Variable names are a feature of existing code.
- munk-a 2y agoHonestly - even arbitrary variable names are more to my liking than positional references. LOC tends to be an extremely unstable thing to reference and would make refactoring a royal pain.
- tomsmeding 2y agoThey argue that this is not a problem because the IDE automatically renumbers cell references. Yes, we definitely need more textual (yes, SPL is textual IMO) languages that cannot be sensibly edited without the official IDE. (I'll make an exception for actually visual programming languages, because we don't have a good interoperable format for those.)
- hnlmorg 2y agoYeah, I thought that was a rather strange argument too. I mean, there have been occasions when I’ve spent more time pontificating over the naming conventions inside a function than I have writing that function. But that’s been long lasting functions that needed to be easy for others to read. Calling the lack of variable naming “feature” is just weird.