Was looking through some code today, and found something that highlights my biggest struggles in programming, it’s compound words and casing. Had identifiers such as…
strikeThroughOffset
whitespaceWidth
lineSpacing
underlineOffset
outlineThickness
I can keep in mind “strike through off set”, but then I struggle to remember, is it strikethrough or strikeThrough? What about Offset or OffSet? Why are offset, underline, and outline, all one word, but strikeThrough isn’t? I think of it as one compound word, many people apparently do, but I guess someone who wrote this code doesn’t.
Or… is this just a me problem? Does anyone else struggle with this sort of thing? Am I missing something or should I “just get good”? My best solution so far is just keep everything always lowercase, personally I find that more readable and memorable, but that’s a lot to ask of literally every other programmer in the world…
Whitespace width? You mean kerning?
You could make those styles into objects. So you have something like:
TextFormat.strikethrough.withWidth(1.dp)
ParagraphFormat.lineheight.double()
Or
TextDecoration.underline.solid.withWidth(1.dp).and.padding(top: 0.5dp)
I’d take the approach of “flattening” compound words and joining them with the preferred style for the given language. Take your first one, for example:
strike-through off-set -> strikethrough offset
Python (snake_case): strikethrough_offset
Go (camelCase): strikethroughOffset
Rust type (UpperCamelCase): StrikethroughOffset … etc
