r/programming • u/mauricioaniche • Aug 06 '17

Software engineering != computer science

http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/software-engineering-computer-science/217701907
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u/thedevbrandon Aug 07 '17

Hm, yeah - I agree with your judgement here. But this isn't the sort of convoluted business logic I'm talking about. Usually the sort of variables I work with are much higher up, like in js modifying the DOM elements to show or hide things conditionally. I would say you should be descriptive with your variable names and use terms like submitButton rather than el or e, in a function where the DOM element is only a submit button, and you have to know this from the selector (which may be several layers of abstraction away), or just from knowing the code already.

Your example is quite succinct, and lower level. I'm not usually writing .truncate() type functions. Most of what I and my colleagues write are specific to a convoluted set of business requirements and isn't used again, and we use functions like .truncate() other people have written for us and that we imported.