Clarity vs. code reuse/generality

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:13:28 +0000, Lie Ryan wrote:

> When people are fighting over things like `sense`, although sense may
> not be strictly wrong dictionary-wise, it smells of something burning...

That would be my patience.

I can't believe the direction this discussion has taken. Anybody sensible 
would be saying "Oh wow, I've just learned a new meaning to the word, 
that's great, I'm now less ignorant than I was a minute ago". But oh no, 
we mustn't use a standard meaning to a word, heaven forbid we disturb 
people's ignorance by teaching them something new.

It's as simple as this: using `sense` as a variable name to record the 
sense of a function is not a code smell, any more than using `flag` to 
record a flag would be, or `sign` to record the sign of an object. If you 
don't know the appropriate meanings of the words sense, flag or sign, 
learn them, don't dumb down my language.


-- 
Steven