[ snip ]
If you say so. I can't claim to be, or to have ever been, a
professional programmer, or even to have a complete understanding
of what such people do. In a long-ago previous life I did get
paid for working on code, but at the time I had little enough
relevant education and experience that "professional programmer"
might have been a stretch. My employers liked me because I had
some specific background they found useful, and I was (am?) good
at finding and fixing bugs. But "professional programmer" --
eh, I don't know. I'm apt to say "I'm not so much a hacker [in
the original sense] as a hack programmer" -- though one who does
enjoy tinkering with code. <shrug>
Most technical people below a low level of ability agree with you, for
they've self-selected themselves for the field based on low verbal
accomplishment in schools where instead of being forced to remediate
their verbal abilities, they were tossed aside like garbage. My style
is off-putting because I use complete and often complex sentences in
comments, I write dedicatory poems and I use vowels in data names to
aid pronunciation in structured walkthrus and pair programs.
Long variable and function names are not in themselves necessarily
off-putting; I find Java's verbosity sometimes a bit over the top,
but the convention of long and descriptive names does mean that
one can often make an accurate guess about what a variable is, or a
function does, based simply on its name, and I think that has value.
Long names that consist almost exclusively of type information,
however -- not so much.
For the most part, my variable names have three characters of type and
at least five of meaning.
As for the verse .... Ah well. If it were more metrical, and the
content were different, I might actually find it a pleasant addition.
As it is -- not so much. Purely my opinion, though, since I am not
by training or inclination a literary critic.
I don't think you know what "metrical" means. Some of Shakespeare is
completely metrical in the mechanical sense:
So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Finde we a time for frighted Peace to pant,
And breath shortwinded accents of new broils
To be commenc'd in Stronds a-farre remote:
No more the thirsty entrance of this Soile,
Shall daube her lippes with her owne childrens blood:
No more shall trenching Warre channell her fields,
Nor bruise her Flowrets with the Armed hoofes
Of hostile paces. Those opposed eyes,
Which like the Meteors of a troubled Heauen,
All of one Nature, of one Substance bred,
Did lately meete in the intestine shocke,
And furious cloze of ciuill Butchery,
Shall now in mutuall well-beseeming rankes
March all one way, and be no more oppos'd
Against Acquaintance, Kindred, and Allies.
But not all:
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
Although "those parts of thee" is an iambic dimeter, "that the" cannot
be a third iamb, because "the" is never stressed in ordinary speech.
Is it an anapest? But this would isolate "eye" since "doth view" is a
clear iamb. No, it's an unusual "double iamb".
Shakespeare could have made the first line a perfect iambic
pentameter:
Those parts of thee the world's sweet eye doth view
but he would then be beholden by his own art to somehow explain any
adjective chosen, and that's not the point at all of sonnet 69:
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crown'd;
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own
In other accents do this praise confound
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds;
Then, churls, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,
The solve is this, that thou dost common grow.
Pedants today insist on a beat that Shakespeare would find over-
regular. And common readers such as yourself, post-Holocaust, are
reluctant to read poetry. Given the ugliness of speech today in shitty
little offices and here, it's too painful for people to be reminded of
what's been destroyed. And, the educated have learned certain catch-
phrases for concealing their unwillingness and pain. They say prose is
"verbose", and that poetry has the wrong metre.
But I say that 'tho Shakespeare learnt the rules in school,
He did not need to summon them up to mind,
For common folk then needed no rule
To help them speak in iambs refined.
Mere hope iamb sprung then like the Lamb
On England's green and pleasant land:
Today, she's a posh tart nam'd Hope
Who was introduced to the Pope.
Getting back to names, though -- I think there is a useful distinction
to be made between, say, ptrIndex1 and ptrIndexIntoMaster. To me the
latter might still be a bit off-putting, but it might also convey
enough information to make up for the verbosity.
Agreed, but for something I considered possibly before you were born:
that sometimes it's possible to be over-meaningful. You see, I might
wish to use the index for different, non-interfering purposes.
Even someone who doesn't care about winning popularity contests
might care about whether he/she was communicating effectively
with his/her audience. (I suspect you don't, but hope springs
eternal, maybe.) Writing for a hypothetical reader who shares
your interests and background rather than for your actual readers --
ah well, to me it doesn't seem like the best use of anyone's
time, but if that's how you want to spend some of your 168 hours
per week, well -- <shrug>.
I write, and think, much faster than that, and the regs aren't the
only people here. I might be writing for succeeding generations as
they wise up (and this is not meant to be vanity, it's quite common in
the history of literature). I also write to self-clarify my ideas.
But here I do expect to get Peter to be either disciplined or
apologize. Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
here.)