The latest article by Joel is a worthy read. If anything is lost on you, try this simplistic illustration:


1. [A planet] rises from the [a direction].
2. The sky is 834958243

How easy can you tell if there's a mistake? Writing to allow your code to be check-able in 1-look.

Also, at long last! The mystery of who-the-big-f*king-idiot-invented-the-Hungarian-Notation-for? is solved. What a big, embarrassing mistake (!) we were taught in schools by straight-faced lecturers saying its A Good Thing.. 苦口良药.. my foot! And for some poorer souls were even forced to practise in work...

Please mis-lead no more. Schools, if you can't get the first one right, try to get this one right, mmkay?

"..Somebody, somewhere, read Simonyi s paper, where he used the word type, and thought he meant type, like class, like in a type system, like the type checking that the compiler does. He did not. He explained very carefully exactly what he meant by the word type, but it didn t help. The damage was done..."
- [full article at Making Wrong Code Look Wrong, by Joel Spolsky]

Now, time to unlearn, relearn...