In pearl or php, $variable is standard syntax.

Also used in Bash, ruby, R when referencing elements of a list…

I’m going to guess the GP didn’t want to give their kid’s name here and decided not to insert a generic Billy in its place. So this being a forum with lots of people experienced in $programming_language it’s common to reference a generic placeholder in variable syntax.

Personally, I think comments on HN should use properly type safe syntax, in which case $CHILD is replaced by:

    with Ada.Strings.Unbounded;
    use Ada.Strings.Unbounded;

    Name : Unbounded_String;

Sure it’s more verbose but, while there are tradeoffs, the comment is likely to avoid certain types of bugs when executed on readers’ brains, a notoriously bug-prone hardware platform.

I would have expected the downvotes for not being funny. But i would have never thought to be taken serious on this. But thank you for taking the time to explain. (Un-?)fortunately, i have been writing php for years. And my bash/zsh setup is slightly insane. But truly appreciate your sincere response (except the last sentence, which makes me think, the sincerity of your comment is equal to the on of my first comment...).

I just love HN, no downvote can stop me! Ever!

On desktop I vouch for stuff that's flagged like this. Can't on materialistic. Someone else should, though.

I vouched it. Dunno if it makes a difference unless others do it too.

It used to be one could say, "but what about abortion!?" And that world set people alight.

Today it's anything anti-Musk or pro-Musk it seems.

In Common Lisp, it's common for special variables' names to have "earmuffs" (i.e., asterisks at each end), so Luke's sister could be *princess-leia*.

(edit: added formality)