Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Allowing hyphens in identifiers

2009/12/11 Johannes Laire :

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 12:54 AM, Richard O'Keefe wrote:

...

Given the amazinglyUglyAndUnreadably baStudlyCaps namingStyle that went into Haskell forNoApparentReasonThatIHaveEverHeardOf

Compare:

someCoolFunc fstParam sndParam fooBarBazQuux some_cool_func fst_param snd_param foo_bar_baz_quux

Before even reading your paragraph below, I thought the second one was easier to read :)

In the first one, it's easy to see that there are 4 identifiers. But, at least for me, the second one is significantly harder to read; spaces and underscored are too similar. So, while underscores more clearly separate words in a single *identifier* and make it easier to read, in some cases I think they make *code* with many identifiers harder to read for exactly the same reason.

In languages where function application looks like "f(x,y,z)" instead of "f x y z" this isn't a problem and I often use underscores.

Your example should be seen with a monospaced font to be fair thought, as programming is usually done with such a font. (But both lines are easier with a monospaced font.) Cheers, Thu