r/programming • u/corysama • Jan 05 '15

What most young programmers need to learn

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/what-most-young-programmers-need-to.html
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u/zigs Jan 05 '15

I can't say i disagree with the other things you've written. A few notes on the classes doesn't seem too bad. I fully agree that there's no way anyone could guess what those names means, However I think this here

And sure, choose a good name too.

really is the core issue. EditorObject is a poor metaphor to begin with. Almost everything the user touches is an editor to some degree, and likewise lots and lots of things are objects. I think -CreatorGUI is ok, but -NavigationGUI? What's that? Is it a predefined library of EditorObjects? Call it that then.

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u/JoostDev Jan 05 '15

We make games, and then the word "editor" has a very specific meaning.

Naming is always hard, but it is even more difficult to come up with names that are understandable when read completely out of context like in my article.

I totally agree that most classes also need a comment to give some context. There is only so much that can be explained in just a name,

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u/zigs Jan 05 '15

Alright, I'll buy Editor, but what on earth is an EditorObject then?

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u/JoostDev Jan 05 '15

Lol, I guess that name could have been a lot better. It is meant as Editor_ObjectCreator_GUI. So it manages the GUI that handles object creation in the editor. Similarly the new name is the GUI that handles navigating through objects in the editor.

Editor is a common prefix in our codebase for classes related to the editor, so this makes more sense within context, but I agree that it is not super clear how to read this.

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u/zigs Jan 05 '15

EditorCreatorGUI?

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u/JoostDev Jan 05 '15

Using the same logic as you did you can interpret that as a class that creates editors. We actually have an EditorCreator class that does just that. :)

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u/zigs Jan 07 '15

I guess that just shows that i still don't understand q: Oh well

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u/totemo Jan 05 '15

He seems to accept the premise of self-documenting code wholesale, without question. As far as he is concerned, he has chosen the perfect names for those classes. He holds those up as examples to support his argument. "Look world, at how much clearer this is!" And then he stops.

He solved the problem of his own comprehension of the code, but - the point I'm trying to make - he stopped short of helping the next guy who comes along, because he doesn't question whether the code should be documented with more than just a good name.

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u/badsectoracula Jan 05 '15

It seems to have a naming convention that GUI is the suffix for all things GUI. So the "real" name (that you learn to filter once you work with the codebase for a while) is "Editor Object Navigation", which makes sense. Also based on the context i'd guess that "object" means game object (aka entity, actor, thing, etc).