Use of abbreviations in scripts
Andre Garzia
soapdog at mac.com
Sun Oct 15 08:58:31 EDT 2006
Dar,
I use only one abbreviation, which is fld for field, I use so many
fields in my scripts that typing field all over grows tedious after a
while so I like using fld and sometimes I use btn but this is seldon
the case. I think the most important thing on delivering scripts for
customers is documenting everything with a clear style, this way,
even with the abbreviations the script will be clear. A script that
contains many jumps (can I call function calling and message
passings, jump?) can lead to a higher confusion in the mind of the
customer than abbreviations.
my styles of coding, if we can really call it a style, is to plan
what is the desired behaviour for the software, then to code that
thing till it works, after that, I keep looking at the code removing
as many lines I can without changing the behaviour I want like making
repetitive tasks into functions, nesting some functions and the like.
Thats why my beta software are hundreds lines bigger than my final
software. Should I call this man-made optmization? As for
abbreviations, I think they hurt more in variable and control names,
for example I was building a little loader application for a software
for me and sivakatirswami, there was this functions to increment a
scrollbar during download of the modules. When I first coded this, it
was called sb "download" then reading the script I thought it was
very confusing and changed it to be scrollbar "download progress
display", this is way more verbose and it waste lots of seconds
typing, but this code is shared code and is important to make it clear.
When I see other people code what usually keeps me thinking is the
names they give to things, I like using that old xTalk variable
naming best practice with prefix char indicating the type of variable
and suffix for possible array. I like being verbose in the name of
important variables and controls. I have a little web editor which
all revolves around one single field which is an outliner view, this
field is called with much pomp "The Outliner", which is not the best
way to call something, but it was so important to the code that I
felt like doing it.
don't know if I am a true xTalker, card-head, message-passing-junkie,
but this is how I do stuff.
Andre
On Oct 14, 2006, at 10:10 PM, Dar Scott wrote:
> I am curious. Is this so the text editor window can be narrower or
> expressions longer? Is this kind of a club recognition signal? Is
> this easier to type for those who use these. I suppose I could get
> used to typing and reading them, so I don't want to make too big of
> a deal about their being harder to read and type. What about
> scripts delivered to a customer?
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