I'm surprised Hacker News readers are even having this conversation. :-) Kernighan and Pike's excellent _The Practice of Programming_ addresses it early on; chapter one _Style_, section one _Names_. It includes suggesting length should be inversely proportional to scope and that “clarity is often achieved through brevity”. http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161586X/mqq-20 http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/