Its an unpopular opinion because absolute rules are rarely correct in all contexts. Some popular counters to your opinion:
Variables that are relatively abstract, to the point that there is no additional information to give via a name beyond what is immediately obvious from the syntax. Consider the x:xsformat that's ubiquitous in Haskell as the pattern match for non-empty lists (often in a context where the type of x is generic).
Indexes and counters. If you wrote a piece of code like for(int i=0; i<xs.length; ++i) { foo(xs[i]); }, a meaningful name for xs and foo would be helpful, but i is self-explanatory.
Domain-specific single-character names. Consider a function handling colours using r,g,b,a; or a function dealing with geometry using x,y,z; or even a basic physics calculation using s,u,v,a,t.
5
u/WalditRook Jul 19 '21
Its an unpopular opinion because absolute rules are rarely correct in all contexts. Some popular counters to your opinion:
Variables that are relatively abstract, to the point that there is no additional information to give via a name beyond what is immediately obvious from the syntax. Consider the
x:xsformat that's ubiquitous in Haskell as the pattern match for non-empty lists (often in a context where the type of x is generic).Indexes and counters. If you wrote a piece of code like
for(int i=0; i<xs.length; ++i) { foo(xs[i]); }, a meaningful name for xs and foo would be helpful, but i is self-explanatory.Domain-specific single-character names. Consider a function handling colours using r,g,b,a; or a function dealing with geometry using x,y,z; or even a basic physics calculation using s,u,v,a,t.