🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BvpCAJ.Dy1@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <1992Oct5.105741.26289@bnr.co.uk>
>pgh@bnr.co.uk (Peter Hamer) writes:
>>1) Maths, and physics, has tended to use single-letter names for variables.
>>   [Often using multiple fonts and alphabets as they run out of names.] It
>>   is difficult to see how the current layout rules generalise to longer
>>   variable names.
>
>This is a problem, but less of a problem than stated.  Mathematicians and
>those who use mathematics are also used to subscripting, superscripting, 
>and other means for extending the set.  At least in set theory, it is not
>unusual to use multi-letter names, and I think that getting mathematicians
>to do that would not be all that difficult.  But I think that they would
>object to the types of names that the CS people like to push, where one
>is spending more time typing the names than programming :-).

This difference between what CS people push and what math/physics
people use stems from a difference in environment.  Math/physics people
tend to operate in a an environment (paper, etc.) with at most a couple
dozen variables.  In this environment, single letter variable names
mean that more complex equations can appear in the same visual space,
which enhances readability.  CS folks work in an environment (payroll
program) with a couple _thousand_ variables.  In the latter
environment, you have no hope of getting a significant fraction of
those variables in the visual space, and self-documenting variable
names (which is not quite the same as long...) enhance readability, and
therefore reduce the time to get the job done.

Trying to find one notation that serves such diverse environments is
not easy.
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		503-737-2554	Computer Science Department
			   crowl@cs.orst.edu	Oregon State University
	      ...!hplabs!hp-pcd!orstcs!crowl	Corvallis, Oregon,  97331-3202