Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:13:28 +0000, Lie Ryan wrote: > >> When people are fighting over things like `sense`, although sense may >> not be strictly wrong dictionary-wise, it smells of something burning... > > That would be my patience. > > I can't believe the direction this discussion has taken.
Me neither. > Anybody sensible > would be saying "Oh wow, I've just learned a new meaning to the word, > that's great, I'm now less ignorant than I was a minute ago". But oh no, > we mustn't use a standard meaning to a word, heaven forbid we disturb > people's ignorance by teaching them something new. A meaning of a word is meaningless if nobody apart the writer understands it. The purpose of code is 1) to communicate with the computer, 2) to communicate with fellow programmer. The second point is especially important if the code are written for pedantic purpose. Teaching is largely one-way communication and often students that does not understand about a slight point could not or would not communicate their feelings because they think it is too silly. If the use of word is criticized on a two-way communication channel (e.g. newsgroup), it should raise a question of whether the word should be described first or whether a synonym would be more suitable for the purpose. Most of these do not apply on practical, non-pedantic purpose though, since in non-pedantic settings you are expected to know and use the jargons however (in)sensible they may be at first sight. > It's as simple as this: using `sense` as a variable name to record the > sense of a function is not a code smell, any more than using `flag` to > record a flag would be, or `sign` to record the sign of an object. Nobody said code smell... linguistic smell is more appropriate. > If you > don't know the appropriate meanings of the words sense, flag or sign, > learn them, don't dumb down my language. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
