Re: So, who's maintaining the module registry?

[Russ McManus <russell.mcmanus@gs.com>]

Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu> writes:

> There is still the question of whether (db ...) or (database ...) is
> the right prefix - this being the age-old battle between brevity and
> precision. People have spoken in favor of both (including privately to
> me). Does anyone have a really strong opinion on this, backed by a
> good reason?

I have a strong opinion, because it goes to the matter of respect for
your fellow programmer.  You see, short names are easy for _you_, the
author, to type, but hard for the next person (who has to maintain
your code) to read.  So long names are a sign of respect for the
people who come after you, and short names are a sign of disrespect,
and of the worst form of laziness.  Don't forget that 80% of the
effort put into a typical piece of software is maintenance.

It's no coincidence that Lisp and Scheme people tend to choose long
and descriptive names over short, unreadable, and confusing names that
are easy to type. (It's also no coincedence that some languages use
combinations of '$' and a non-alphanumeric character to have important
semantics).  I prefer the Lisp and Scheme way, and I would like to see
guile continue in this tradition.

If you're using a real editor, long names aren't much of a problem
anyway.  Furthermore, an eight character name hardly qualifies as
'long'.

Some examples from other places to demonstrate the point:

    elisp: 'buffer-substring-no-properties'
   scheme: 'call-with-current-continuation'

The defense rests...

-russ

--
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed without any
other reason but because they are not already common."    
             --John Locke