Re:How much do we bend to the will of our tools?
by thedirt0115 on Tuesday February 04, 2020 @06:56PM
(#22242494)
"Can we explain the differences in identifier length preferences between language communities by pointing to the availability of reliable auto-complete in one and lack thereof in another?"
I'd have to say "no" to this. What immediately jumped to mind was Java vs Go, where there seems to be a strong preference towards shorter identifiers in Go even though there has basically never been a time when Go did NOT have good autocomplete capabilities.
One might argue that Go tends to have shorter identifiers because the authors of a lot of the earliest Go code came from a C background where there wasn't autocomplete. But nearly every language has reliable auto-complete these days, so I'm gonna stick with "no".
I'd have to say "no" to this. What immediately jumped to mind was Java vs Go, where there seems to be a strong preference towards shorter identifiers in Go even though there has basically never been a time when Go did NOT have good autocomplete capabilities.
One might argue that Go tends to have shorter identifiers because the authors of a lot of the earliest Go code came from a C background where there wasn't autocomplete. But nearly every language has reliable auto-complete these days, so I'm gonna stick with "no".