this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I always use x or y, coming from Python background

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

OMG the PRNDL

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I started using the first letter of the thing I am iterating over. This is particularly helpful with nested loops so I can easily remember which index variable corresponds to which thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I dunno why, but I have always used x, y, z for my generic for-loop variables.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

When my brain doesn’t work I’ll resort to naming them the single of the plural. Like keys turns into key when i don’t wanna call it “objkey” or “outrageouslylongnamethatmayormaynotbeafittongwordtodescribeakey”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I thought it come from mathematical sequences, but actually it doesn't. My best bet is that i is the shorthand for index

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

chuckles in Python

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Well. I guess I'm then a some kind of heretic then. 🤷

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I'm honestly prefer short but (usually) complete words. Somewhere along the line I realized that being explicit really helps when you need to change it later.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

don't mind i but personally always use index or x, y, z for games

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

WTF, I have never used nor seen "j."

I don't usually have to name these variables these days though. Pretty much everything I use has foreach or some functional programming type stuff.

And like that, the off-by-one mistakes disappear.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

foreach is useful when you don't need to know the index of something. If you do, conventional i, j, k, etc. are useful.

A lot of it depends what you're doing (number crunching, for instance) or if you're in a limited programming language (why won't BASIC die already?) where parallel arrays are still a thing.

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