Waldo JaquithPlease, please, stop using "foo" and "bar” in code documentation. Give us real examples that mean something. Not "if (foo > bar)," but “if (height > limit)." Not “foo++” but “counter++”. Give us a logical hook to hang our hat on, not nonsense words.
SwiftOnSecurity@waldoj I came across this one time in Wikipedia and it completely ruined the ability to understand what the hell they were talking about. Then I edited the article to use real words and it was immediately understandable
@SwiftOnSecurity Every time I read the jq manual, I get annoyed at how hard it is to follow for this reason. It's a great tool but its manual is really dragged down with all the foo/bar/baz nonsense. https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/#Basicfilters
LisPi@waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity It has never made things much worse for me, but I've never been particularly sure why it was a practice either.
Imbolc@lispi314 @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity I have to say I am a bit baffled that people find the foo/bar convention to be confusing when used to document in a generic way. To me, it is just like the convention of using x in math.
The whole point is they are easy to recognize as things you need to replace.
However I realize some newer programmers consider this convention to be a kind of gate-keeping by us old-timers, and that would be bad. So maybe it is time to stop using our cherished foo and bar.
⛧TJC⛧@eob @lispi314 @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity
Yea this is an excellent point. Mathematics is full of short variables. You don’t see “volume_of_cone = …” It’s unreasonable to be ok with mathematical prose but for some reason want super long var names in cs prose.
@tjc @eob @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity I've actually been thinking that prose should never have been dropped out of proofs and examples in mathematics.
@lispi314 @eob @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity fair enough, but that is not going to happen. Centuries of mathematical texts are the prior.
@tjc @eob @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity Yeah, unfortunately (despite even more centuries prior of exactly that being used).
@lispi314 @eob @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity thought experiment: would you replace the symbol for pi with “ratio_of_circle_circumfrence_to_diamter” and use that everywhere?
Probably not. You would probably write let [pisymbol] =…. Then the brief symbol everywhere. It’s also a brevity thing - without variable substitutions the text would be a much more massive wall of text
@tjc @eob @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity That is true, although very little text bothers to actually do those let parts for the various symbols. There's just the assumption you know everything.
Wikipedia Mathematical articles are widely considered useless for learning for exactly that reason. "Explanations? We don't need no stinking explanations."
Incognitim@lispi314 @tjc @eob @waldoj @SwiftOnSecurity
Very true- I've done a LOT of math tutoring— ranging from the absolute lowest levels to lower college level— and consistently, one of the biggest issues is not understanding what some arcane symbol or piece of jargon means. Once that hurdle is cleared, it's amazing how many people go from being 'bad' at math to being math badasses.
Very true- I've done a LOT of math tutoring— ranging from the absolute lowest levels to lower college level— and consistently, one of the biggest issues is not understanding what some arcane symbol or piece of jargon means. Once that hurdle is cleared, it's amazing how many people go from being 'bad' at math to being math badasses.