Thursday, November 10, 2005

Bad Naming

A couple definitions from the American Heratige Dictionary entries for “through”:

  • In one side and out the opposite or another side of: went through the tunnel.
  • Among or between; in the midst of: a walk through the flowers.
  • Past and without stopping for: drove through a red light.

So “through” can mean either passing by (last bullet) or traversing something (first two).

Visual Studio’s options for stepping when debugging code:

  • Step Into (F11)
  • Step Over (F10)

Why in the world would the .NET Framework folks name an attribute to bypass a method  System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThrough ?  It doesn’t match any of the two prepositions normally used with Visual Studio’s “Step” command.  Without context its intent is ambiguous by dictionary definition.

Do yourselves and your API’s consumers a favor.  Disambiguate your method and attribute names.  Don’t know what the heck “disambiguate” means?  I just proved my point by using a silly word where a clearer one would have served better.

Go read your McConnell again.

Now Playing: Bruce Springsteen — The Essential.  Not sure about this.  I hate the first three cuts: Blinded By The Light, For You, and Spirit In the Night.  The remaining cuts look better.  Hope so, otherwise I’ll be making more use of the fast forward button.

No comments:

Subscribe (RSS)

The Leadership Journey