Picking good identifier names

Question

Ok, so you can read guidelines on identifier naming \'til you\'re blue in the face... camel case, pascal case, make \'em descriptive... but they won\'t help you actually pic

Answer 1

Clean Code is a good book but don't follow the advice on identifier names and comments. (See Self Describing Code and Long Identifiers Make Code Unreadable )

For example, here is Uncle Bob's bowling example (see other replies for Uncle Bob's code) done properly:

// Returns total score for a game of ten-pin bowling. On entry the number of fallen pins
// for each ball is provided in fallen[] and the number of balls bowled is in balls_bowled.
public int score()
{
  int points = 0;                                            // Cumulative count of points for the game
  int ball = 0;                                               // Current shot or "ball" (1 or 2 per frame)
  int frame;                                                  // Current frame of the game


  for (frame = 0; frame < max_frames; ++frame)
  {
    if (fallen[ball] == 10)
    {
        // Strike (all pins knocked over from 1 ball) gives bonus of next two balls
        points += 10 + fallen[ball + 1] + fallen[ball + 2];
        ++ball;                                                 // Move to next frame (no 2nd ball)
    }
    else if (fallen[ball] + fallen[ball + 1] == 10)
    {
        // Spare (all pins knocked over in 2 balls) gives bonus of following ball
        assert(fallen[ball + 1] > 0);
        points += 10 + fallen[ball + 2];
        ball += 2;                                             // Move to first ball of next frame
    }
    else
    {
        // Open frame just gives score of all fallen pins of both frame's balls
        assert(fallen[ball] + fallen[ball + 1] < 10);
        points += fallen[ball] + fallen[ball + 1];
        ball += 2;                                             // Move to first shot of next frame
    }
  }
  assert(frame == max_frames && ball == balls_bowled);
  assert(points <= max_frames*30);                // Maximum possible score
  return points;
}