Re: A few beginner questions
Re: A few beginner questions
- Subject: Re: A few beginner questions
- From: Peter Duniho <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 17:12:03 -0700
From: Scott Ribe <email@hidden>
Believe me, we all know what Hungarian notation is, and I don't
think you'll
find anyone here who will say anything good about it.
Well, that's a mistake on your part. I will say something good about
it.
Someone else has already pointed out the difference between what's
commonly called "systems" and "apps" versions of Hungarian (the names
refer to the original Microsoft business divisions that used the
different styles). The "systems" is indeed pointless. But the
"apps" style is not at all like what has been described in any of the
posts here, and in my opinion has much value even in a modern IDE.
I'm not going to waste time extolling the virtues of Hungarian. It's
not my goal to get other people to start using it. But all of the
negative comments I've ever seen with respect to Hungarian, including
all of the ones posted on this mailing list recently with respect to
this thread, make incorrect assumptions about how Hungarian should be
used and thus fail to provide any valid argument against it.
The short explanation is that when used properly, Hungarian notation
describes the semantic use of a variable, not the type. There's no
reason at all that changing the type of the variable would require
changing the name, if Hungarian is applied correctly. It remains
useful even in modern coding environments.
If someone doesn't want to use it, doesn't want to take the time to
learn it, that's fine. But please don't bad-mouth it without
actually understanding it (and yes, it's clear from the comments that
the folks who are making negative comments about it haven't really
used it or understand the proper use of it).
If anyone is curious, there are good articles related to the
notation, many of the links can be found on the Wikipedia article
referenced earlier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation
Note that all of the negative quotes and comments with respect to
Hungarian mistakenly focus only on the "systems" variant.
Here is a reasonably complete, if a bit out-dated, description of a
particular set of Hungarian notation. Specifically, it's the
convention that the Microsoft Applications division follows (i.e
"apps" Hungarian):
http://www.byteshift.de/msg/hungarian-notation-doug-klunder
Keep in mind that the notation is simply a guide. It's perfectly
reasonable and desirable to invent new tags that better describe the
semantics of types or usages unique to your own code. Of course, one
should use the conventional tags for things that fit into those
conventions.
It's unfortunate that this instructor is teaching a completely broken
variant of Hungarian. It's this sort of thing that leads to people
dismissing Hungarian as pointless or unworkable without really
understanding it (and to be sure, it is neither pointless nor
unworkable).
Pete
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