Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development
by Ididntdothis on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @11:11AM
(#22738257)
Totally agree about the importance of naming. But the big problems that are hard to fix later come usually from design flaws, not from naming and often are overlooked in reviews.
Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development
by C4stor on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @12:55PM
(#22739573)
I agree with you. My point, if it wans't clrear, is that I think correct naming is a prerequisite to finding design flaws in review ! Hence we have the same ultimate goal :-)
I don't find that to be the case. I'm usually looking for bigger things like:
1. making multiple trips to a relational database when a single statement joining tables can make it one trip;
2. not handling exceptions that can cause data loss or data corruption.
(I'm not trying to be exhaustive. The examples above are common ones I've seen regularly and they make me cringe.)
I don't need to know the variable names used in these cases. The very act of not using a relational database properly or not handling exceptions is easy to spot.
The whole point of naming things is that you don't have to dive in this 60 LoC function, but rather can use its name to know what it does, and make a global mental model.
If you're not naming things correctly, you effectively make it almost impossible to review the design, and that's why people starts with asking about names.
Reviewing names is the exact opposite of picking local stuff. Names have no importance locally, but they have tremendous one globally.
So, please, use good names ^^