One thing that software engineers love to be catty about during code reviews is terrible naming conventions.

The rules or guidelines for how to name variables in software code is a subject for a whole other article. It's easily looked up, but (just like the tabs vs spaces debate that was immortalized in a Silicon Valley episode) it can be strangely a personal a preference sometimes.

For today's purposes, suffice it to say that the variable name's prefix should indicate what type of variable it is ("str" for string values, e.g. strFirstName) and should be descriptive (listBranchLocations instead of list1).


Plannedscape Traditions

Another Plannedscape developer Robert and I have long loved making fun of bad variable names. It's the difference between "guerilla" and "gorilla" programming.


The Other No-Nos In Naming Conventions

Vulgarity is a winner. Back in the day when debugging was harder, I used to get frustrated at not finding errors and used to put error trap messages of things like, "Did it even fucking get here - 1".

While that let me blow off steam, it's a bad idea. I say that as somebody who has compiled and sent out code with those kind of messages still in there. Not good.


Gallery Of Bad Naming Convention

All of which is just a lead up to this little gallery of poor/stupid naming convention stories plus a few that are just inappropriate.

Enjoy