OK, I'll start: When I write code, I spend a fair amount of time on making sure ...

lilyball · on May 10, 2016

And don't forget that "the next poor bastard" might be yourself, 6 months later, after having forgotten all the details about the code.

skybrian · on May 10, 2016

The place to cut might be somewhere else (like leaving out unnecessary features or abstractions).

The original post is just giving us a metaphor - you need to decide how it applies.

mnsc · on May 10, 2016

"unnecessary ... abstractions"

This is what I thought of when the artice said "visible toolmarks". An abstraction layer missing/not fully implementer exposing "ugly" plumbing code.

ArkyBeagle · on May 10, 2016

As a maintainer, I both adore and prefer one-letter variable names when appropriate - loop indices for old crufty array index oriented languages, temporary variables that all references can be seen on one page, that sort of thing.

spraak · on May 10, 2016

Cool, you sound amazing. I'm tasked with maintaining an old part of the app now and would appreciate hearing how you feel this way

ArkyBeagle · on May 10, 2016

It's just Stockholm syndrome.

a one-letter variable name does communicate "this variable is of no consequence, it works like an index register works in assembly, and you should be able to prove it correct by inspection. Wish it had a "foreach"... "

plus, I read a lot of signals code - filters, tranforms, where the one-letter names are translations from formulae. It's "you can write Fortran in any language" code.

Celebrate the diversity.