ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) (03/30/88)
One aspect which seems not to have come up in the lengthy
discussion of the suitability of long versus short names is the
difficulty in manipulating long names on a typical computer CRT
screen which is still limited to perhaps 24 lines of 80 characters
or so.
If one has the luxury of working always from a complete, up to date
source listing, long names can be very helpful, especially when the
program editor supports typing abbreviations with automatic expansion to
the full name. It would also be valuable to have a programming support
environment which allowed one to call up the declaration and associated
comment for any name quickly.
Unfortunately, the small CRT screens which many computers have today
makes the use of names longer than about 10 characters difficult. One then
does not get to see nealry as much of the program on screen at one time.
I know that workstations are increasingly supporting larger screens, but
recent figures I have seen indicate that better than 70% of practicing
programmers will be working with the small screens even in 1989.