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A bike-shedding thread on top as usual.

by layer8 1y ago

poisonborz 1y ago
Code quality is not bike shedding.
- Sharlin 1y ago
  It is, however, off topic and beside the point. And whether short names are a code quality issue is a rather contested and context-dependent topic.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  Code quality of... an example snippet?
  - davidmurdoch 1y ago
    Especially
    - blackcatsec 1y ago
      especially now that the example is gonna end up in some LLM somewhere and folks will just copy pasta.
refulgentis 1y ago
Usually I'd cosign, but I get it, after a similiar issue I had a couple days ago with a Rust article that was insanely frustrating to deal with. It's a brain scramble because you can't just read in toto. Well, you can literally, but, you don't feel like you grok it. And when you take a second pass you gotta slow down and stop and parse "what's r here? is it relevant? oh rows?" It's one of those things that's hard to describe because it doesn't sound like much if you got it. And this example is trivial, especially if you're not open to the idea its a problem (r/c = rows/columns) But it's nigh-impenetrable in other scenarios. You feel like you're barely understanding something that you actually might grok completely.
- embedding-shape 1y ago
  > It's one of those things that's hard to describe because it doesn't sound like much if you got it. And this example is trivial, especially if you're not open to the idea its a problem (r/c = rows/columns) But it's nigh-impenetrable in other scenarios. I agree, it's highly context-specific. In a small demo for a small blog post with basically no complexity? Go ahead, use 1 character variable names, it really isn't difficult. In the 1000 long CUDA kernel where you barely understand what's going on even though you understand the concepts? I'd be favoring longer descriptive names than one letter names for sure.
bfkwlfkjf 1y ago
Yeah I see this a lot on HN. I think people feel the need to make precise and accurate statements about things. I think a lot of them, if they'd deep breath and waited 30 minutes, they wouldn't comment.
- embedding-shape 1y ago
  The internet is filled with pedantics, creeps and dogs posing as cats. The whole "take a breath" thing was early abandoned in favor of the now traditional "reply until the other party gives up" approach, which requires you to really dig into their messages and point out spelling mistakes, fallacies, and for programmers, variable names.
skerit 1y ago
It's hard to read, especially in the lambdas. It's a small critique, I'm sorry it got upvoted by other people.
dang 1y ago
I understand the frustration (probably no one feels it more than we do, because it's our job to help discussion stay meaningful). But please don't respond by posting like this. It takes time for the contrarian dynamic to work itself out (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and once that happens, the original problem subsides but and the secondary problem (shallow objection to the objection) sticks out like a sore thumb. It's usually enough to downvote (or, in egregious cases) flag a post that shouldn't be at the top. In really egregious cases, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is also a fine idea. From the guidelines: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A bike-shedding thread on top as usual.

by layer8 1y ago

A bike-shedding thread on top as usual.

poisonborz 1y ago

Code quality is not bike shedding.

Sharlin 1y ago
It is, however, off topic and beside the point. And whether short names are a code quality issue is a rather contested and context-dependent topic.
nkrisc 1y ago
Code quality of... an example snippet?
- davidmurdoch 1y ago
  Especially
  - blackcatsec 1y ago
    especially now that the example is gonna end up in some LLM somewhere and folks will just copy pasta.

refulgentis 1y ago

Usually I'd cosign, but I get it, after a similiar issue I had a couple days ago with a Rust article that was insanely frustrating to deal with. It's a brain scramble because you can't just read in toto. Well, you can literally, but, you don't feel like you grok it. And when you take a second pass you gotta slow down and stop and parse "what's r here? is it relevant? oh rows?" It's one of those things that's hard to describe because it doesn't sound like much if you got it. And this example is trivial, especially if you're not open to the idea its a problem (r/c = rows/columns) But it's nigh-impenetrable in other scenarios. You feel like you're barely understanding something that you actually might grok completely.

embedding-shape 1y ago
> It's one of those things that's hard to describe because it doesn't sound like much if you got it. And this example is trivial, especially if you're not open to the idea its a problem (r/c = rows/columns) But it's nigh-impenetrable in other scenarios. I agree, it's highly context-specific. In a small demo for a small blog post with basically no complexity? Go ahead, use 1 character variable names, it really isn't difficult. In the 1000 long CUDA kernel where you barely understand what's going on even though you understand the concepts? I'd be favoring longer descriptive names than one letter names for sure.

bfkwlfkjf 1y ago

Yeah I see this a lot on HN. I think people feel the need to make precise and accurate statements about things. I think a lot of them, if they'd deep breath and waited 30 minutes, they wouldn't comment.

embedding-shape 1y ago
The internet is filled with pedantics, creeps and dogs posing as cats. The whole "take a breath" thing was early abandoned in favor of the now traditional "reply until the other party gives up" approach, which requires you to really dig into their messages and point out spelling mistakes, fallacies, and for programmers, variable names.

skerit 1y ago

It's hard to read, especially in the lambdas. It's a small critique, I'm sorry it got upvoted by other people.

dang 1y ago

I understand the frustration (probably no one feels it more than we do, because it's our job to help discussion stay meaningful). But please don't respond by posting like this. It takes time for the contrarian dynamic to work itself out (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and once that happens, the original problem subsides but and the secondary problem (shallow objection to the objection) sticks out like a sore thumb. It's usually enough to downvote (or, in egregious cases) flag a post that shouldn't be at the top. In really egregious cases, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is also a fine idea. From the guidelines: "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html