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0 pointsnicoburns5y ago0 comments

I find that types can reduce readability as well as enhance it. They add noise and make it harder to concentrate on the variable names which are often much more important than the types which are often (but certainly not always) obvious from context.

0 comments

secondcoming5y ago

Interesting point.

I'd never have believed it myself, but find myself using acronyms instead of variable names when the type allows it.

    void foo(MyType mt, const MyOtherType& mot);

It's the variable names that are the noise, types are everything. And no, it's not Hungarian notation either in case anyone suggests it!

However, it maybe doesn't work that well with things like class member names. YMMV

nicoburnsOP5y ago

I guess it partly depends on how varied your types are. In some domains you can find yourself working with 10 variables that are all strings, or all floats/integers. At that point the type isn't that helpful for distinguishing which variable is which.

secondcoming5y ago

I should have added that fairly liberal use of type aliases also helps.

    using B64String = std::string;

    B64String encode(const std::string& text);
    std::string decode(const B64String b64);

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

secondcoming5y ago

Interesting point.

I'd never have believed it myself, but find myself using acronyms instead of variable names when the type allows it.

    void foo(MyType mt, const MyOtherType& mot);

It's the variable names that are the noise, types are everything. And no, it's not Hungarian notation either in case anyone suggests it!

However, it maybe doesn't work that well with things like class member names. YMMV

nicoburnsOP5y ago

secondcoming5y ago

I should have added that fairly liberal use of type aliases also helps.

    using B64String = std::string;

    B64String encode(const std::string& text);
    std::string decode(const B64String b64);

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse