• Gentoo1337@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I remember one GitHub project that implemented some algorithm (I think it was Dijkstra’s) but only used 4 or 5 single letter variables and just kept reusing them.

    • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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      1 year ago

      When I was in college, I had a guy that I was working on a project with that did this constantly. At one point I looked at one of his files and the variables were named a, b, c, aa, ab, ac, ba, bb, etc. That when I was like, bro, you gotta stop doing this.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        “Inside you there are two wolves…” or something:

        Option 1: Sit down with them and go line by line through it. Make him identify each variable’s purpose and then immediately find and replace to rename every instance with a more descriptive name.

        Option 2: Small script to shuffle the variable names in his code around after each of his commits.

    • lorty@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      When you are used to math equations, it’s easy to slip into that habit.

        • MooseBoys@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Only if they are well-known in the language you’re using or domain you’re writing for. x and y are fine for coordinates. i and j are fine for loop indices. But abbreviating things unnecessarily is bad IMO. s = GetSession() is too terse, for example.

          • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            No, I mean single-letter vars are standard in physics and math, but reusing vars is not acceptable. Obviously they’re not good practice except in the scenarios you describe, but mathies gonna math.

    • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Maybe they had a background in low-level assembly code? If you’re writing assembly that’s kinda sorta how you’d handle registers.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    “result” is fine. That is the variable you will end up returning that you have to fill with stuff first.

    “data” on the other hand…

    • Hal_Canary@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I came here to say this.

      Declare result in the first line of the function and return result is the last line. In C++, this is a big hint to the compiler that you want return value optimization to kick in.

  • erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    As a person who victimizes coworkers like this, I apologize. Thank you for pointing it out, and I will stop doing it.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Be proud that it’s a step up from var x

      Be scared that your coworkers are planning how to best apply the baseball bat to your knees anyway

  • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    I’ve had instances where I worked with an API so badly designed in a dynamic language that I had no idea what I might receive.

    This, when I get something back that’s not what I expected, I just logged the type because I really don’t know what it is. It’s the result. Whatever that means.

  • gramie@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    It could be that this is a habit left over from pascal, where result is a reserved word, and is automatically made the return value of the function.

    If it is in the context of a short function, I don’t see that it’s all that bad.

    • aksdb@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Yup, I also do that. If I just need a variable to put in what will be returned, I call it result. What it means should be clear from the function name. Repeating that feels redundant.

    • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Exactly. If it’s a statically typed language and the function has a clear name? I know what type it is, I know what it’s for, I’m good.

      There are far worse sins, like intermediate variables or worse, public class members named “obj” or “data”.

  • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You declare it as the first line after “function getNextDay() : date {”, then it is glaringly obvious that is a date variable that will (eventually) contain tomorrow’s date, and will be returned by the function.

    However, I would only use “var” if it’s initialized in the same statement. It prevents Smurf code, and the compiler knows the type straight away.

    Given a small and clean context, variable names don’t need to be specific.