On 6/1/2016 9:46 PM, Ronald Chmara wrote: > Hi. > https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/aa203477bc24b1fadc16d65533c1749162260592 > was my commit, put together as a result of discussions on this list > (and sidebars). I can try to speak to it from memory. > >> Note that it also encourages this weird C style naming with >> abbreviations, hence, I would be open for discussing it. > > It was 2000, 16 years ago. > > WRT: "C style naming": C style PHP, *was* a big part of the PHP > adoption base in 2000. No objects. No inheritance. No classes. No > namespaces. Folks were also coming to PHP from ColdFusion, from Perl, > from JavaScript, and bringing their language conventions with them. > Without many guide rails, there was a weird mix of CreaTive_nameing > (and spelling). Conventions like verbnoun, Noun_Verb, > parent_Verb_noun, Parent(Noun())....(and most imaginiable > permutations) were sprinkled throughout the code, throughout > documentation, throughout the community... and one of the earliest > public complaints about PHP was about about inconsitent function > naming. The goal was to bend the curve, over the years, to bring some > order and consistency, not just to internal function naming (as in > this case), but to the entire PHP ecosystem. Thus, the standards about > parent naming, about underscores and.... > > ...Abbreviation: In 2000, most PHP code was typed, manually, No IDE > completion, no built-in syntax checking, no code generators, every > single keystoke was a human hammering away in emacs/vi, BBedit, > Notepad (etc.), and longer function names tended to decrease code > quality (due to increased human error potential), and take up valuable > screen space (800x600 pixels on emergency terminals, though a nice > developer setup could have had 1024x768 pixels on a screen, all *at > the same time*.) Coding houses still had rules like "maximum of 80 > characters per line", to encourage brevity. Abbreviation in this > environment made for more compact code, with less typing errors, but > came with the costs of inconsistent abbreviations, and decreased > readability. > > In 2016, using an editor with built in syntax highlighting, > auto-completion, while at coding desks measuring in thousands of > pixels across multiple screens, it seems a bit dated, but when > debugging text files with vi on a spare monochrome terminal session, > late night over a modem at 3,600 Kbps, those things mattered a great > deal. For folks who are still using modems, terminals, and updating > their PHP on 800 pixel screens, I imagine they might still matter. > > -Ronabop >
This is a nice story but it simply is not true at all. You refer to the beginnings of the 21st century as if it was the 1970/80s. Steve McConnell: Code Complete, Second Edition > > Make names of routines as long as necessary > > Research shows that the optimum average length for a variable name is > 9 to 15 characters. Routines tend to be more complicated than > variables, and good names for them tend to be longer. Michael Rees of > the University of Southampton thinks that an average of 20 to 35 > characters is a good nominal length (Rees 1982). An average length of > 15 to 20 characters is probably more realistic, but clear names that > happened to be longer would be fine. > > > A study by W. J. Hansen found that longer names are better for rarely > used variables or global variables and shorter names are better for > local variables or loop variables (Shneiderman 1980). Short names are > subject to many problems, however, and some careful programmers avoid > them altogether as a matter of defensive-programming policy. > The first edition of the book contains these passages as well, it was released in 1993 and the years of the studies are already in the quotes. I know that there are many valid reasons for short names as well as appropriate and I know that there are certain domains where long names are not even possible or make no sense in the first place.[1] However, PHP is a high level programming language that does not suffer from such limitations. The only relation to C is the fact that PHP's underlying engine is in C. Users of PHP are not familiar with C and very often not familiar with any programming language other than the ones for the web (e.g. JavaScript). From our own source: zend_rsrc_list_get_rsrc_type() How is that more readable or faster to type than any of the following who are human readable and much clearer? zend_typeof_resource() zend_resource_type() zend_get_resource_type() [1] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/162698 -- Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger
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