Little John wrote:Current changes (2017-03-17)
Thank you,
Little John, for the continuing updates.
Much appreciated.
Is it only my impression, or did the conversation about icon naming quickly turned south ?
If it stopped abruptly, it's too bad, because, independently of how other programming languages name things,
Tenaja and
skywalk made valid points.
It's indeed easier to follow and recognize how code is structured when the naming scheme used follows the pattern
[
main part non-changing] + [
qualifying part varying].
Granted, it hurts our normal perception and use of human language, but it makes sense in computer logics.
The usual
UpArrow and
DownArrow are very clear, and they come naturally, since they are descriptive and follow natural speech patterns.
But
ArrowUp and
ArrowDown (or
Aardvark_slow and
Aardvark_fast)
(you'll have to ask skywalk...) present the advantages of better documenting the built-in logics of the code, and being easier to sort.
Same with
DrawBox_rounded and
DrawBox_square rather than
DrawRoundedBox and
DrawSquareBox .
The latter are crystal clear about their purpose in life, but the former emphasize better the internal structure of the code and the logical relationship of things, whether they be icon names, functions, procedures or code sections. And, again, they're easier to search and sort.
In fact, this is exactly the same debate as with the numeric representation of dates. Every nation is attached to its date representation format, but in the end, from a computing perspective, the only format that makes sense is the
ISO format [yyyy-mm-dd] because it's the only one that can be sorted without any confusion, using either alphabetical or numerical sorting algorithms. Try it within a Windows Explorer folder, and you'll see.
In the end, it's a matter of preference.
But some preferences have intrinsic advantages that may be interesting to adopt.
Just think of the metric system...