Using name instead of initials

Samir Saidani saidani at info.unicaen.fr
Mon Sep 12 23:41:51 UTC 2005


goran at krampe.se writes:

> Hi!
>
> Samir Saidani <saidani at info.unicaen.fr> wrote:
>> I agree with you, but I think we don't need to ask for an agreement :
>> just replace your initials sd by 'StephaneDucasse'. Then you can use
>
> Mmm, and if everyone start changing their initials we need to deal with
> the fact that there is already lots of code out there with the old
> initials too. 

True, that's why I keep the old one and my old squeakmap account to
tackle this problem. Anyway there is probably initials which
correspond to nothing in squeakmap since the initials convention was
taken before squeakmap. Another way should be to change all my
initials in the next release by the new "initial" : I will see how to
do this kind of script. For the older image, I keep the old squeakmap
account for a while, then delete it after few years, since probably I
will unable (and don't want) to answer questions of what I did few
years ago : just read the code and consider that it is anonymous.

>> Some people wants initials and other wants something more explicit. I
>> think that the economic way is to choose by default something like
>> 'DavidSmith' which is more explicit than 'ds' : 'StephaneDucasse'
>> encodes more information than 'sd', and we don't need to make a
>> connection to SqueakMap to know the name : so it is economic. 
>
> There is no "connection to SqueakMap". You have the SqueakMap instance
> inside your image - the lookup is just a Dictionary lookup, no network
> involved.

Anyway, replace "connection" by "calling instances", this is the same
: dissipation of energy, when it is not necessary. The initial can
encode easily this kind of information - the name.

> So let me recap what I think:
>
> 1. We need unique ids of some kind. The developer initials has served
> this purpose until now, and sure, it is not perfectly readable - but it
> is what we have and we need to think a bit IMHO.

So let us think a bit now. For me, I see that this is economic to
encode the name into the "developer initials".

> 2. If we want to have a more readable field then we seriously need to
> consider the fact that just renaming our ids to something else will
> cause "information loss". If I rename myself to "GoranKrampe", then all
> code with "gk" will be hard to map to me.

See above, we can also maybe give the possibility to have at least one
alias for developer initials in squeakmap : keep the old one if you
want and let us use a readable one.

> 3. Adjust the tools so that we stuff not only the initials but also the
> full name into changesets and MCs. Then we have both and all are happy.

> And of course, I am not sure how serious problem we have - but it seems
> less smart if people start renaming their dev initials so that we lose
> the ability to track all old code...

I see that I made an error by using an unreadable developer name, so I
decide to get a new readable name for developer name. For the tracking
old code issue, personally I never contact a developer for a question
in one particular method for few particular lines after few
years/months : it will be silly. 

Cheers,
Samir



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