[Geminidog]

I agree with this in general.

For programming, specifically, though, I feel the typical style used in programming straddles the line where the brevity hits a point of obscurity that actually leads to more time spent trying to decipher meaning.

I would say the time that is lost to deciphering meaning is much much more detrimental then time lost to parsing over-verbose words by a very large margin. Thus it's better to err on the side of longer names in programming until the verbosity is equal to the English language. I mean nobody complains about the English language being way too verbose, so why not bring programming up to the same level of clarity and verbosity?

Better to over communicate so they say.

[akavel]

That's an interesting argument. Personally, I don't think I agree, i.e. I feel very differently (though e.g. typical Haskell is an example of being too dense for me too). But I can't currently capture the feeling in more concrete words. That said, if we're both now speaking about what we feel, did I manage to at least succesfully counter your argument about this being illogical? ;)

One question came to my mind that I'm curious what's your take on, from the point of view you present: what's your opinion on notations such as: numbers (i.e. 123 vs. English language: hundred twenty three), and chemical formulas (e.g. H2O vs. English language: particle of water)?

[Geminidog]

>But I can't currently capture the feeling in more concrete words.

I mean if you want something more quantitative: Count the amount of posts in this thread that were communicated with a programming language as the primary mode of information transfer versus the amount of posts that used English instead.

Because the usage of Verbose and wordy English exceeds the usage of code one can conclude that people prefer the general wordy nature of English over the conciseness of code.

Due to this, it makes sense to make your code as close to verbosity as English as possible. I can read a novel or magazine almost passively, the same cannot be said of code.

>One question came to my mind that I'm curious what's your take on, from the point of view you present: what's your opinion on notations such as: numbers (i.e. 123 vs. English language: hundred twenty three), and chemical formulas (e.g. H2O vs. English language: particle of water)?

Whatever makes sense. 123 and one hundred and twenty three basically communicate the same thing. Humans as a whole prefer 123. There's no lapse in communication using either method. "One hundred and twenty three" takes a bit longer to read but no crime was committed. 123 doesn't lack any clarity for a typical human being either.

Perhaps I would prefer 123 as Arabic numerals are more universal globally then English.

For chemical formulas, H2O is used for balancing equations. It's specific notation for an algebra of using symbols to derive an exact conclusion, it is less a form of communication and more a system of symbols used for solving problems.

H2O, specifically, however, has culturally entered English nomenclature as a well known concept so it can be used in naming. There is however a slight potential for confusion so ultimate clarity makes more sense to me here. There is zero ambiguity with "particle of water" or even "H2O molecule" and thus my preference is to use English if the goal is communication.

The thing that you have trouble putting into words here is H20 is an elegant symbol that communicates the exact same concept then the uglier "particle of water." Humans are instinctively reacting to an aesthetic issue not a practical one. Again no crime is committed when someone uses the variable name "particle_of_water" in a programming language over "H2O."

I didn't go into it in other arguments but I will get into it here because you've noted to me that you have identified this "feeling" and you acknowledge the contradiction between English and coding.

The reason why the contradiction exists is purely an aesthetic issue. It's a response to what we consider categorically to be "ugly" and "beautiful" and has nothing to do with practicality. When viewed this way the contradiction between English and programming languages makes sense:

We define bad grammar in English as "ugly" but we also have a separate aesthetic sense for poetically naming things. This comes from beyond just programming. For example humans generally find "the White house" to be a better and more poetic name for "The place where the president of the United States" resides.

There's actually two separate modules in your brain here that are odds here. Bad english grammar is clearly triggering the language module in your brain, but at the same time your brain has a poetic naming module that prefers "The White house" over "presidents place of residence" and this module is being triggered when you program or write poetry. You can only begin to see this when I point out the logical contradiction.

Both of modules in your brain are bypassing the neocortex of the brain where people conduct higher order logic. It's actually very hard to realize this if it's not pointed out as people often mistake these feelings for being something that arose from their own internal higher order logic. The whole point of my writing take all of these modules in your brain and place them at odds so you can identify the origin of each and give your neocortex executive control. Anyway here are the three modules that are getting triggered:

  - Bad english grammar triggers the language module in your brain. 
  - Verbose naming in code triggers the poetry module in your brain.
  - The logical contradiction between the two modules above when identified through meta analysis triggers your neocortex. 

Now that you know, you can step above it all. You can override instinctual your emotions and use your higher order logic to come to the correct conclusion.

To go a bit off on an tangent here there is in fact a morality module in your brain as well! What most people consider to be good and evil is actually instinctual emotions triggered by this module! Again similar to the main topic, most people don't realize this and believe their morality is built around logic when in actuality people are all just building a logical scaffold to justify a pre-existing instinct. Think about it... same with the whole whole poetic naming instinct we have, morality actually starts out as a feeling before we begin to logically justify it.

Believe it or not using the exact same method of pointing out logical contradictions I can actually prove to you that morality is in fact an instinctive module within your brain. It's off topic though, and I've digressed to much, so I won't get into that here.