Re: Class Naming in Core

On 1 June 2017 10:16:16 BST, Tony Marston <TonyMarston@hotmail.com> wrote: >"Rowan Collins" wrote in message >news:CEF783BB-8E1F-4A20-9CC6-1364A122BECC@gmail.com... >> >>On 31 May 2017 10:26:06 BST, Tony Marston <TonyMarston@hotmail.com> >wrote: >>>wrote in message >>>news:86dba466-a764-522b-6990-39fd7668a79c@fleshgrinder.com... >>>I should point out that snake_case was the universal standard decades >>>before some people switched to CamelCase. >> >>[citation needed] > >My first job in computing was with a UNIVAC 1108 mainframe in the >1970s. >This used a 6-bit character instead of an 8-bit byte, which meant that >it >could support upper case characters, but not lower case. Where a name >was >comprised of several words an underscore separator was used, as in >"end_of_file". Fascinating, but doesn't make it "universal", or frankly have anything to do with how we write code 40 years later. >>> That was only because some software could >>>not handle long names, but could handle both upper and lower case, so >>>an upper case character was used instead of an underscore. >> >>[citation needed] > >Try reading >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_(programming)#Length_of_identifiers Mentions absolutely nothing about the origins of CamelCase, which a quick search suggests is somewhat unknown. One theory is apparently environments whose character sets had replaced underscore with a left-arrow assignment operator. Which, again, is fascinating but is as irrelevant to designing modern languages as the origins of the word "beef" is to ordering a cheeseburger. >Some studies have shown that that most people find it easier to read >compound names which use the underscore separator. Look at the >following: > >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_case#Readability_studies >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_case (first paragraph) This, however, is at least tangentially relevant to the original topic, since it shows some reasons to pick one convention over the other. Even more relevant would be studies testing the advantages of having a convention at all, which I would expect to include increased efficiency and reduced mistakes because it's easier to remember a list of items that follow a fixed pattern. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]