[thaumasiotes]

> but let’s not stop calling ... the database temmp_v3_old_Udpate_RstdnewV2

I worked briefly on a codebase that was otherwise produced by Chinese programmers (in China).

It did feel somewhat surreal seeing variable names that were in English but misspelled, particularly when e.g. several classes all had a field of the same name, except that in one of them, the name was misspelled.

I assume it didn't bother them because (a) they weren't English speakers anyway, and (b) they autocompleted everything. Why would it matter that `update_history` happens to be spelled `udpate_history` in one out of five classes? You just type `u` and pick the right field.

[dmurray]

I've seen the same thing many times with English-speaking programmers. Plenty of people just don't spot that 'udpate_history' is misspelt.

[maccard]

And sometimes that mistake propagates and leaves us 25 years later still using referer [0]

[0] https://annaken.github.io/a-brief-history-of-the-referer-hea...

[dmurray]

This one always seemed to me like a plausible alternative spelling (cf. traveler for traveller).

Maybe the reviewers who let this through were speakers of British English who knew it was misspelt but conceded it without a fight, having already lost on color, gray, center...

[thaumasiotes]

Traveler is stressed on the first syllable; referrer is not.

[mumblemumble]

This is me.

The invention of the symbol name spellchecker a decade or so back has been a wonderful boon for me. It's a little annoying to teach it the new jargon when I'm getting started in a new codebase, but it's easily a net time saver. Catching spelling errors when you first create the new symbol is always cheaper than fixing them after it's being referenced from 15 different files and can't be fixed without another code review.