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The machine's the small part. The harder job is the person who'll be maintaining the code years from now.

Richard:

I guess my question is - who, in their right mind, would pick something like maintaining code for a profession and even a career? Not I.


Psmith

Psmith wrote:Richard:

I guess my question is - who, in their right mind, would pick something like maintaining code for a profession and even a career? Not I.


Psmith

You are here asking how to write and understand code; the answer is in your mirror.

I fought it for years, thought it was stupid and distracting. And we're by no means required to use that notation, you'll see lots of people who don't. But after a while I started to see the advantages and began using it myself. Now I'm hooked I'm afraid. There are plusses you don't at first anticipate, and it doesn't take long before your brain barely even notices those initial letters.

Psmith wrote:I guess my question is - who, in their right mind, would pick something like maintaining code for a profession and even a career?

Yours truly. More than half of the projects I work on were started by another programmer.

And even with my own code, when a project spans multiple versions over many years, going back into the code later on to add a new feature can be difficult if the code isn't clear. Adopting a consistent style, for both naming conventions and things like handler order (Ken Ray and I tend to put system messages at the top, with custom handlers below in top-down order, and more general utils at the bottom) makes it much easier to move around in a code base to find the specific stuff you're looking for.