this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I started coding with TurboBasic which allowed variable names of any length but the compiler only looked at the first two letters (and case-insensitive at that), so DOUGHNUT_COUNT and DoobieCounter were actually the same variable. Good times debugging that kind of shit.
Yeah, I was thinking of old 8-bit computers that did the same ignore-after-second-char thing. Most people didn't bother typing the extra characters though because 1) those characters took up valuable memory and 2) if you accidentally put a keyword in the middle of your longer name, the tokeniser would see it and assume it was a keyword.
e.g. Calling your variable
FORGETseemed like a good idea until you got a syntax error becauseFORandGETare both keywords.FOit is, then. Or justF.COLORwas cursed too;ORis usually a keyword, even ifCOLORitself isn't. British EnglishCOLOURmight save you here, but you're still losing those four extra bytes.