John W. Colby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Aug 10 21:20:06 CDT 2004
Saving your time is nowhere near as relevant as saving the time of the person coming in after you. You put in 100 hours or 200 hours and are done. The maintenance is hundreds or thousands of hours over many many years. If the poor schmuk coming in has to spend 100 hours just figuring out what the heck your naming is before they can even do anything, the company just lost all the money you saved them and MORE. That person goes away and the next person comes in and spends 100 hours figuring out your crazy naming scheme... That person goes away... Hmm.... II? GIVE ME A BREAK!!! You are not focused on the overall picture, just your convenience and "getting it out the door". I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that if you went to a Microsoft, or any other large company and told them "I want to program for you and this is what I do and why" (giving them this email below) they would politely show you the door. Using the fact that there is no "one standard" to justify doing whatever you feel like is just silly. John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 4:53 PM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: RE: [AccessD] Naming Conventions <JC>So what do I use for a counting byte? Or a counting long? The naming convention I use (yes I realize that is I) has three character prefixes for not only objects but data types as well. Your point about "the whole world doesn't program the same way" is of course valid. But to program with the convention I use I or J or K is NOT a valid variable?</JC> That is exactly my point, that no one programs the same, which includes 'naming conventions'. Since there is no truly established (and adhered too) naming convention, anything works, and doesn't work, just as well/unwell. And, you proved my point, 'to program with the convention I use', is just like saying 'I like blue, so your red car is the wrong color'. LOL. Because there is no absolute standard, there is no way to program for those that come after you. YOU may like the code that you write, but the next guy may use a different standard then you, and he will probably gripe just as much about your convention as you do about someone elses. To really write forward code, I (try to) stick to two rules. One, stick with the same naming convention throughout a project. No matter what your naming convention is, changing rules in mid stream is far more agitating then just adjusting for a new convention. Two, stick to the same programming logic/style. Personally, my pet peeve is goofy logic. I honestly don't care what someone uses as a naming convention, because I look at the logic the code is running, rather then look at the names of the variables. I have seen some pretty bass ackwards logic in a lot of code. Not too mention that existing Objects do not adhere to prefixed naming conventions. It's Me.Height, not Me.dblHeight. Why? Because Height is a property, it's going to be a number. When you look at someone's code, and they refer to Me.Height, do you then go to the help, to find what data type is used? No, because quite frankly, data types are irrelevant until the logic is satisfied. If the logic works fine, you should already be familiar with the variables in play. Then it's only a matter of looking at the dim statements to verify data types. So when I create a Class, I use Properties without prefixes, and I name the classes as to what they represent, without a prefix. It's not colForms("MyForm"), it's Forms("MyForm"). It's not Dim rs AS objADODB.objRecordset, it's Dim rs AS ADODB.Recordset. So if I build an Class to represent an Inventory item, I would use Dim ii AS InventoryItem. Ack, wha?, spatter, spit, garble. That's right, Dim ii As InventoryItem. Why? Because I code a LOT. In VBA, VB, and ASP. If I were to use: objCurrentInventoryItem, that is 23 characters, versus TWO! I type around 80 words a minute, which is 400 characters a minute. It would take me a minute to type 17 of those variable names, versus typing ii 200 times! That saves time......by quite a bit. Drew -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com