There are lots of things that look like great methods, but experience with them often leads to disillusionment. For another example, Hungarian notation is a really great idea, heavily adopted by Microsoft Windows, and just does not deliver on its promises.

For example, types can have long names, but that doesn't work with HN. Changing a declaration to have a different type then means you've got endless cascading identifiers that need to be redone. And so on.

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zozbot234 7 months ago | parent [-]

> Changing a declaration to have a different type then means you've got endless cascading identifiers that need to be redone.

This is actually a good thing, every mention of that identifier is a place that you might need to adapt for the new type. Hungarian notation is an excellent coping mechanism when you have to use compilers that don't do their own type checking - which used to be a huge issue when Hungarian notation was current.

	▲	WalterBright 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		On balance, it isn't a good thing. Having high refactoring costs means: 1. you become reluctant to do it 2. lots of diffs cluttering up your git history. I like my git history to be fairly narrowly targeted. I don't use languages that don't do type checking. Microsoft uses Hungarian notation on their C interface and example code.