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Re:Use long flags when scripting by btilly on Monday February 04, 2013 @02:27PM (#5166422)
We had a very similar discussion over the weekend at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157215 but with the domain expertise being with non-programmers.

My opinion remains the same as it was there. If you've already gone through the effort of learning the short options, there is no reason not to continue amortizing that effort by making use of them. On the other hand if you have not really learned the short options, it is only worthwhile doing so if you plan to use them enough in the future that it will pay off.

Of course if you are writing code that you expect to be maintained by someone else, aim it at the fluency that you expect to be able to demand at them. Aiming it lower than that will just make things more painful for you. Aiming it higher will make things more painful for them (and the vast majority of the cost of software development is in maintenance, so they matter more than you do in the long run).

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