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by MattGaiser 1756 days ago
I just prefer nice, long, descriptive function names.

I was working on an unfamiliar codebase yesterday and had to work with the postMessage function. It was React, so one might assume that it sends the message to the backend, which was my initial assumption. Nope. It posted it to the page. Didn't help that another utility had another postMessage that was about what to do after the message was sent.
2 comments
tartoran 1756 days ago
Better than writing really long descriptive function names is to not get carried away but write well described function names that show some intent or description and are chosen carefully. I worked on some code bases using long descriptive function names (inherited from another dev) and it wasn’t always useful. It was overkill. The descriptions were either too generic, too descriptive (redundant in half the cases) or handling such long saussage names was simply tiring. When you have to scroll right to read a name it becomes a problem..

The takeway is that merely writing very long descriptive names isn’t a silver bullet and could cause harm despite good intentions.

I suggest going back a after a few days for a refactoring (renaming functions or variables) and see how it reads to you. Then repeat the process a few days later when you’re even more detached from that code.

In many cases self documenting code is going to help you remember the model you had in your head when building it. And if done well it will help others as well, your code will end up not giving headaches to future maintainers.

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SV_BubbleTime 1756 days ago
x100 on intent!

Even something simple like “if the function starts with “is” it will return a Boolean has helped me organize things that return status codes and have side effects. Small thing, but I like it.

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SavantIdiot 1756 days ago
I worked with a guy who wrote a CPU simulator and exceeded the MSVC 256-char function name limit. It's hard when you like 80/100 col code and a function name is longer than that.
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rightbyte 1756 days ago
Does escape new line work in function names in C? Brb.

Edit: Hah. It does.

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