I am also not a fan of your short naming on these procedures.
Sure, at least for the developer that initially uses your tool, they will learn what the short names mean. That developer is not who I am concerned about. I'm more concerned about the developer that comes back to maintain the code 4 years from now after the original developer has left. There is nothing about these names that would tell me at a glance what they do or even hint at the fact that it is a tool called RPGMap. When I am maintaining code, I likely don't need the details of what something like this does, I just need to be able to read it and understand the intention so I can either flag it for review or quickly move on if it is not important to me. I don't want to have to figure out what this is, find the documentation, and then read the docs just to know if it is pertinent to my current task.
As for typing in longer names, just use RDi. Ctrl+Space is your friend.
All that being said, the tool is interesting, and I will take a closer look as time allows.
Brian May
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-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jacobus erps
Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2017 6:12 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: RpgMap: a versatile key/value store for ile rpg
I've heard the critique before, but i chose the short names deliberately to get compact code that is good readable. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but the short names make the code a lot clearer (and less typing).
It also doesn't help, i think, that - maybe - we still have some trauma left from RPGII, max six uppercase character names everywhere. That was really bad, but not because you needed to write "EXSR", but "CUZC@".
John already explained it very well. There is a limited number of keywords, which you use repeatedly. Writing "set-lower-limit" everytime gets boring quite fast. As long as the application specific variable names have sensible names, the keywords should be short. Also because in RpgMap you would more than usual use nested procedure calls. The short procedure names also have some logic in them, such as rdn (read-next), and rdp (read-previous). They're easy to memorize. If you know that "sll" is set-lower-limit then "sgt" does not need explaining anymore.
I much prefer:
cur = rm_sll(rm_cur(map):rm_a('a'));
Instead of:
cur = rpgmap_setLowerLimit(rpgmap_NewCursor(map):rpgmap_NewChar('a'));
The second example is only somewhat clearer in what it does if you're just trying to guess what the code does.
The 'a' and "map" are the important parts, which are easier readable in the first example. They get more buried within the rest of all the text in the second example (low signal-to-noise ratio). The first example is easier to read, but only if you know what "sll" and "a" do, of course. But you have to read the docs anyway.
Long descriptive identifier names are good, but not always.
On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 11:48 PM, John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Mihael also preferred longer and more descriptive names. I am less
opposed to the shorter names. I don't think I would have chosen
*these* names, but I probably would have chosen shorter than what you
and Mihael seem to prefer, and I don't have a particularly strong
negative reaction to these names.
There is a school of thought that goes: You have to learn keywords
anyway. They have special meaning in the language, just like you would
learn mathematical symbols. If there aren't too many of them to learn,
and they will be showing up all over the place, it is nice to have
them short. Variables and functions you write yourself can have names
as descriptive (and as verbose) as you want.
But by no means are you alone. Agreeing with Mihael already puts you
in good stead. I think there are lots of programmers and language
designers on both (or all?) sides of the issue of how to choose
keywords.
John Y.
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