Post by @kionay@lemmy.world

2026-10-25 05:59 UTC

No single letter variable names. Yes I also mean the i in for loops you see in tutorials. Write out “index” or give it a more descriptive name. Doing the typing isn’t the hard part of programming, nor the most time consuming, so making it take a teeny tiny bit longer by having longer variable names is more than worth the value of variables the effortlessly describe themselves. line length is not that big of a problem anymore, we’re not on CRTs, people are regularly developing with 4k monitors, we don’t need to limit to 40 character lines but even still if you can’t possibly think of a way to break up that long of a line and the only thing you can think of to make it shorter is using over-acronymized variable names then you’ve already lost the plot somewhere

Replies (4)

@Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2026-10-25 06:20

I disagree when it comes to standardized single-letter variable names. They’re invaluable when writing dense code for games or other math-heavy applications and you learn to recognize them very quickly. So i for index in loops (and j, k for nested loops, but you’re almost always doing something wrong if you need them); x, y, z for position and h, w for size; r, g, b, a for color data, etc - you’ll immediately know what the variable is for at a glance even though it’s a single character.

Open ##5235376
@onlinepersona@programming.dev 2026-10-25 06:23

I agree. Short, nonsensical, meaningless, artificial variable names make me think the person writing the code is a dinosaur from when they still had punch cards. Get with the times.

Open ##5235434
@marcos@lemmy.world 2026-10-25 16:27

I do really disagree here. Name lengths should be proportional to the size of their scope. If your function has 1 line, your local variables should almost all have 1 letter.

Open ##5241986
@Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works 2026-10-26 02:00

I’ll only agree for advanced for loops and not the basic C style ones. Also if you are iterating over coords like XYZ or UV you can use those variables as single letters too.

Open ##5249193