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Discussion on: Cleaning Up Your Code: Good Names

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aarohmankad profile image
Aaroh Mankad

I completely agree!

For trivial pieces of code like for loops or even a function that just prints out an array, variable names aren't so important.

Naming conventions become more and more important once you start writing code that can't be trivially understood.

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aleksikauppila profile image
Aleksi Kauppila

I completely disagree. There is no trivial code. For loops especially need to have clear variable naming. Iterating over i, j, may be a common practice but it does not make it less awful. It has to absolutely clear what data is processed inside a method. Are you sure you even know what to expect if you can't name it?

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coolgoose profile image
Alexandru Bucur

Of course, for loops by definition point to an 'index' (hence the initial i), and that index is going to be called on a clear named variable.

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aleksikauppila profile image
Aleksi Kauppila

Yes, "traditional" for-loops work that way... My opinion stems from mainly using languages that have an iterator-based for-loop where the "i" is not the index, but an item.