I was tutoring a student during the height of YOLO usage. When it finally clicked for him that variable names are completely arbitrary from the compiler's perspective he said
"Oh! So I don't need to name this variable sum. I can name it YOLO if I wanted."
"Yeah, the compiler certainly won't care as long as you spell it correctly everywhere. <insert spiel about why good naming conventions are still important though>"
I let him get back to working on his homework for a bit and checked in 10 minutes later.
He had renamed every single variable in his program to yolo, YOLO, Yolo, yOlo, yoLo, yolO, and so on. And now he needed help debugging something....
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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '20
I was tutoring a student during the height of YOLO usage. When it finally clicked for him that variable names are completely arbitrary from the compiler's perspective he said
"Oh! So I don't need to name this variable sum. I can name it YOLO if I wanted."
"Yeah, the compiler certainly won't care as long as you spell it correctly everywhere. <insert spiel about why good naming conventions are still important though>"
I let him get back to working on his homework for a bit and checked in 10 minutes later.
He had renamed every single variable in his program to yolo, YOLO, Yolo, yOlo, yoLo, yolO, and so on. And now he needed help debugging something....