[plt-scheme] Re: Naming style

From: Will Duquette (will at wjduquette.com)
Date: Sat Feb 14 19:24:17 EST 2009

On Feb 14, 4:13 pm, Grant Rettke <gret... at acm.org> wrote:
> > This strikes me as a very add way to name functions; I'd have thought
> > that having one function, "append", with arguments indicating the
> > alignment, would make more sense.  On the other hand, someone
> > implemented it this way on purpose, and given that it's used in a
> > document for newbies like me I presume it's good style.  Would someone
> > care to explain to me *why* it's good style?
>
> I have heard people explain that when they use dynamically typed
> languages they prefer more verbose procedure names because it makes it
> easier to "refactor" their code.

I'm not questioning the verbosity; I'm questioning defining umpteen
functions when one function with two or three keyword arguments would
do the same work.  The umpteen functions are no doubt simpler and
easier to understand in isolation--but when you've got a swarm of
them, it seems to me that you end up with more to understand.  I agree
that using just "append" instead of, say, "hc-append", is probably a
bad idea; "append" is too generic.


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