Re: Hungarian Notation

Jim Cooper wrote:
>
> Ah hah! You admit memorising prefixes gets too difficult eventually!

I've never actually denied that, but for me that is irrelevant because I
never had any desire or thought to devising that many prefixes. Again you
seem to assume (by trying to get an "admission" out of me) that I had to
"rein myself in" and "resist" going overboard. That never happened because
it simply never occurred to me to start using prefixes anywhere else, I had
a specific reason for using the ones I use and no more.

Let's try an analogy to concepts, it's not perfect but I think it will
serve. A concept stands in for *any* number of instances. E.g. the concept
"dog" represents, as a *single* unit, all dogs you have ever seen or learned
about or will ever see in future. When you think of "dog", a particular dog
or two *may* come to mind, but it is not necessary - i.e. you do not need to
think of any or all actual dogs, or all the things you know about dogs, or
*all the different types of dog that exist* in order to use the concept
"dog" in your thoughts. If it was necessary to think of all the different
types of dog you know about, it would make the concept unusable.

I use the prefixes I do in a similar way; to indicate more essential types,
not every possible subset. Doing the latter *would defeat my purpose*; a
button is a button. I absolutely agree it would be terrible if I used, say,
"spbtn" for SpeedButtons, "tbbtn" for ToolButtons, "bb" for BitBtns, and
"wnbtn" for my own button descendant - but not simply because it would
explode the number of prefixes, *but because it would destroy the very
purpose I have in using them* - so I can see at a glance in code that it
involves a button but without caring or needing to know the specific type of
button.

Now in that light, there's always room for improving anything and, out of
this discussion I *may* stop distinguishing, in future, between combo and
list boxes (and probably listviews too) and use a single prefix to represent
them - probably "lst". (This is as close to a victory as you are going to
get here, so live it up! <g>)

--
Wayne Niddery - Logic Fundamentals, Inc. (www.logicfundamentals.com)
RADBooks: http://www.logicfundamentals.com/RADBooks.html
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can
stand by itself." - Thomas Jefferson


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