If the combination of such languages, high-performance hardware, and large scale compute problems is interesting.. the startup I work for in Mountain View is hiring...
:D Hope things are well by you!
And you too sir!
1.1B Taxi Rides on Kdb+/q and 4 Xeon Phi CPUs
101–104 of 104 posts
Re: 1.1B Taxi Rides on Kdb+/q and 4 Xeon Phi CPUs
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are completely misrepresenting what McConnell says. There is a summary of his advice here[1], but just to highlight Describe everything the routine does And we mean literally everything. If that makes the name ridiculously long, the name isn't the problem. Your routine is. And Make names as long as necessary According to McConnell, the optimum name length for a variable is 9 to 15 characters; routines tend to be…
I don't agree with everything McConnell says, but if you have it handy, note at page 173: "A study from Basili and Perricone found that routine size was inversely correlated with errors: as the size of routines increased (up to 200 lines of code), the number of errors per line decreased (Basili and Perricone 1984). And the conclusion (on page 174): …None of the studies that reported decreased cost, decreased error ra…
Ok, I accept you aren't trolling :)
I find it difficult to agree that using non-representative names for variables or functions improves understadability.
Notably, using something like x to represent a meaningful value means the brain has to hold the mapping between the two, which will decrease the number of useful pieces of information kept in short term memory[1].
The brain doesn't keep track of the number of characters in a variable name.
[1] http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/peterson/psy430s2001/Mill...
Re: 1.1B Taxi Rides on Kdb+/q and 4 Xeon Phi CPUs
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with everything McConnell says, but if you have it handy, note at page 173: "A study from Basili and Perricone found that routine size was inversely correlated with errors: as the size of routines increased (up to 200 lines of code), the number of errors per line decreased (Basili and Perricone 1984). And the conclusion (on page 174): …None of the studies that reported decreased cost, decreased error ra…
Ok, I accept you aren't trolling :) I find it difficult to agree that using non-representative names for variables or functions improves understadability. Notably, using something like x to represent a meaningful value means the brain has to hold the mapping between the two, which will decrease the number of useful pieces of information kept in short term memory[1]. The brain doesn't keep track of the number of chara…
So icsa[1] said something interesting on this point:
The issue, for me, is not readability but context. Even a word or two (e.g. cuts, begins, dims) helps greatly to establish the context of the code. Like having a map before hiking.
A comment can clearly provide that context without making the variable names long.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747314
> The brain doesn't keep track of the number of characters in a variable name.
Surely you must appreciate that if we use too many characters the window will scroll?
Re: 1.1B Taxi Rides on Kdb+/q and 4 Xeon Phi CPUs
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't agree with everything McConnell says, but if you have it handy, note at page 173: "A study from Basili and Perricone found that routine size was inversely correlated with errors: as the size of routines increased (up to 200 lines of code), the number of errors per line decreased (Basili and Perricone 1984). And the conclusion (on page 174): …None of the studies that reported decreased cost, decreased error ra…
Ok, I accept you aren't trolling :) I find it difficult to agree that using non-representative names for variables or functions improves understadability. Notably, using something like x to represent a meaningful value means the brain has to hold the mapping between the two, which will decrease the number of useful pieces of information kept in short term memory[1]. The brain doesn't keep track of the number of chara…
long names are distracting. try using short names for variables where code requires scrolling and very short name for variables in short blocks of code (where you see the context without scrolling). something like 'idxLS' instead of 'indexOfLastSlash'. Or x+=totalsMst[i] instead of accumulatorOfTotalValues+=totalValuesFromMasterList[i] if this is the only line in a loop.
as your opponent has mentioned, context is the key. you operate with objects in your brain, and the faster the transition from code element to the brain object, the better you understand the code. long names make this lookup unnecessarily difficult.