Whenever you store a value that has a unit in a variable, config option or CLI switch, include the unit in the name. So:

  • maxRequestSize => maxRequestSizeBytes
  • elapsedTime => elapsedSeconds
  • cacheSize => cacheSizeMB
  • chargingTime => chargingTimeHours
  • fileSizeLimit => fileSizeLimitGB
  • temperatureThreshold => temperatureThresholdCelsius
  • diskSpace => diskSpaceTerabytes
  • flightAltitude => flightAltitudeFeet
  • monitorRefreshRate => monitorRefreshRateHz
  • serverResponseTimeout => serverResponseTimeoutMs
  • connectionSpeed => connectionSpeedMbps

EDIT: I know it’s better to use types to represent units. Please don’t write yet another comment about it. You can find my response to that point here: https://programming.dev/comment/219329

  • @cgtjsiwy@programming.dev
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    141 year ago

    In languages with static and convenient type systems, I try to instead encode units as types. With clever C++ templating, you can even get implicit conversions (e.g. second -> hour) and compound types (e.g. meter and second types also generate m/s, m/s^2 and so on).

    • CoderKat
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      41 year ago

      A good example is Go’s time package. You’d normally express durations like 5 * time.Second and the result is a time.Duration. Under the hood, it’s just an int64 nanoseconds, but you’d never use it as a plain nanoseconds. You’d instead use it like d.Seconds() to get whichever unit you desire.

    • deadcream
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      21 year ago

      I prefer to encode quantities as types (and store value with most precision inside) and provide functions that return it in desired unit as int/long/whatever.

      E.g. Duration type that stores nanoseconds and has to_seconds(), to_milliseconds() etc. It just feels more natural to me. Why should some function care which units are used? It just needs “duration” and will convert to desired unit internally (also it won’t be part of its api which is good because it’s unnecessary restriction).

      Of course some C++ devs will disdain this approach because it’s inefficient to pass highest precision value around when its not needed but for my use cases it doesn’t matter.

      Also, you should always use standard types when available. E.g. C++ has std::chrono, in Java world there are java.time types and kotlin.Duration.

    • janAkali
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      1 year ago

      I like how in Nim you can create a type and then overload default operators to support custom types (operators are just functions with 2 arguments in Nim), in example: you can do Hours + Seconds or kilometers * miles, etc. It feels very organic and not like a “hack”.

  • @Ullallulloo@civilloquy.com
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    1 year ago

    Those are just types. You shouldn’t write types in the names. It’s called Hungarian Notation, but it’s just redundant. If you need to check the type of a variable, hover over it and your IDE should tell you that temperatureThreshold is type DegreesCelsius. No need to add extra cruft. There’s also a question of how specific everything needs to be.

    It’s also especially problematic if you later refactor things. If you change units, then you have to rename every variable.

    Plus, variables shouldn’t really be tied to a specific unit. If you need to display in Fahrenheit, you ideally just pass temperatureThreshold and it converts types as needed. A Temperature type that that has degreesF() and degreesC() functions is even cleaner. Units should just be private to the type’s struct.

    • 𝕊𝕚𝕤𝕪𝕡𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕟OP
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      1 year ago

      I absolutely agree. But:

      • sometimes you need to modify existing code and you can’t add the types necessary without a giant refactoring
      • you can’t express units with types in:
        • JSON/YAML object keys
        • XML tag or attribute names
        • environment variable names
        • CLI switch names
        • database column names
        • HTTP query parameters
        • programming languages without a strong type system

      Obviously as a Hungarian I have a soft spot for Hungarian notation :) But in these cases I think it’s warranted.

      • @abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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        21 year ago

        Not sure what languages you commonly work with, but in good modern languages you can simply declare “feet” as an alias of integer (or double?), and no refactoring would be required.

        And any good toolchain to parse / generate JSON/etc can absolutely get the types right.

    • JackbyDev
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      51 year ago

      There are plenty of times where the type is just something generic like an integer and making a wrapper type is not worth the effort and this is a useful approach.

  • @vtr@programming.dev
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    121 year ago

    That seems akin to commenting. The problem with this approach is that text is not code. It’s very easy to forget to change text. In that case it becomes the worst of both worlds, you have a variable name that actually misleads you.

    Much safer than this is to encode this kind of information into the code itself in such a way the program won’t compile of the types are incorrect.

    • 𝕊𝕚𝕤𝕪𝕡𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕟OP
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      81 year ago

      I understand what you mean, and I even agree with it, but just to be a little pedantic, variable names are code, or at least they are more code than comments or docs.

      But yes, encoding units into the type system is a much better solution. It doesn’t work however for config options, environment variables or CLI switches.

  • @lavafroth@programming.dev
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    101 year ago

    I think some of the modern languages handle this pretty well. Rust has algebraic data types thanks to its brilliant use of enums. Go has a similar type system. Taking the elapsedTime example from the post, for solving this duration related problem, a Rust programmer would use Duration::from_millis(millis) or Duration::from_secs(secs) and forget about the unit. It’s a duration, that’s what you wanna care about.

  • Kresten
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    81 year ago

    It’s so annoying when you have to figure out what unit a variable is describing :(

    • 𝕊𝕚𝕤𝕪𝕡𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕟OP
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      1 year ago

      Related: Making Wrong Code Look Wrong

      TL;DR: there is good and bad Hungarian notation. Encoding types (like string or int) in variable names is bad. Encoding information that cannot be expressed in the type system is good. (Though with the development of type systems, more and more of those concepts can be moved into the types, keeping variable names clean.)

      But as a Hungarian, I’m obviously a little biased :)

    • deadcream
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      41 year ago

      I disagree. Every time I see duration: Long in code I want to find whoever wrote that and bash them on the head because what the fact this Long is? If unit is not immediately obvious in some way in current context (not necessarily as variable name), your code is not clear, period.

  • mirisbowring
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    41 year ago

    But what if the FileSize can be „1G“, „1024M“, 518K“, etc.?

    Documentation itself is much more important and modern IDEs and Editors will show you what to type in :)

  • Tim
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    31 year ago

    The better fix is to try to use types that represent those units or data types (e.g. duration instead of ms). Makes it harder to accidentally use the wrong units and documents the code / intent better.