[willwinger]

I have been using Rust for my side project https://github.com/elasmojs/rooster

Rust is just great! I feel liberated from Java and Node.

But what intrigues me is why do programmers insist on making code look and feel difficult? Is there a secret obsession in good programmers to make their code look clever? Is variable naming not a basic etiquette?

[mplanchard]

How would you approach the naming of this example differently?

I have gone back and forth on whether to align with the general convention on single-letter generic type names, but I’ve tended to come back to the single-letter approach any time I try making them more specific. The issue is of course that they are generic, and so naming them too explicitly robs them of some of their “this is any type” genericness. For lifetimes, I will definitely sometimes name them more explicitly than `’a`, but usually only when there’s more than one, as a way of being sure I don’t mix them up. However, the association of lifetimes with references tends to be straightforward enough that it often seems clearer and less messy to just name them with single characters.

[willwinger]

I understand but in this case we have the lifetime as s, seed as S and copy as A. And you can see how it creates that extra effort for someone who is seeing it for the first time. For me any code is associated with its application and that application should be evident in the code.

We talk a lot about user experience and usability in our end products but we do not extend that thought to our fellow programmers at code level.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

I don't mind single-letter names, but I dislike having the same letter used with different case for two different names. In this example I'd probably have a lifetime 'l, a seed S, and a copy C. That way there's no "s" vs "capital s" confusion when saying what the names are.