Re: [boost] Re: algorithms namespace

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-02-21 14:28:54

Dave Gomboc wrote:
>
> Besides which, "fs" is difficult for an English-as-a-second-language
> speaker to look up in the dictionary.  I have the impression that some
> simply don't care about that because English is _their_ first language
> -- an unfortunate attitude.

Well. It's actually the opposite. Because English is (presumably) your first
language, you prefer the non-abbreviated "filesystem" over "fs". From the
perspective of someone who doesn't "think in English", the two have pretty
much the same inherent value, i.e. they are arbitrary identifiers. A mental
mapping translates these identifiers into the entities they represent. Since
the extra letters in the longer identifier do not add any semantic value to
non-English speakers, they are merely clutter and do not contribute to
readability.

Your observation that "stdio" is a _word_ in non-English programmer
cultures, and not an abbreviation of "standard input/output", is very much
in line with the above.