this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
1048 points (97.2% liked)
Programmer Humor
32410 readers
205 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.