Usability principles applied to programming

Usability principles I apply to programming/design:

I use the most restrictive naming conventions for everything. Essentially no characters besides letters, with case mattering. A lot of InterCapping.

Use of different variable names. I know all about scope, but I change the variable names for my benefit, not the computer's. Nested for loops using j, for instance.

I've read both CSS specs, but not recently. I don't want to waste my time on CSS vaporware: features in the spec, but that no one, not even Mozilla, implements. I generally avoid using the specs to look things up, because other sources tell you how to use it, and even more importantly, which browsers it will work in, something the W3C people don't want to sully their standard hands with.

I try to make my industrial strength passwords also relatively easy to type. I've failed more often than I've succeeded, but one thing I've learned is that capital letters in the middle of words are a sure-fire recipe (at least for me) for frustration, maybe because my brain is used to watching for two letters getting SHifted at the beginning of words but not in the middle.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Friday, July 26, 2002 (Link)

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