Adam Bien's Weblog

I think I prefer the second option becasue the names are shorter. But an important thing missing from this discussion is the arguments, in January month=0 or month=1, is year 2007 or 107 (to denote 2007). Frankly, I have never understood why sensible defaults such as 1=january, 2007 = year 2007 etc. has never been enforced before. Also the whole clutter about 24 hour times where hours can be 0-23 or 1-24... this is really confusing, as eg. hour "16" you don't know if this is 4 pm or 3pm (depending on 0-23 or 1-24 hour format is used).

In conclusion, use sensible arguments and sensible defualts. I think this is far more important than the wording of the method names (now that the suggested alternatives are so closely related).

Dr. Kasper Graversen

Gesendet von kasper Graversen am November 21, 2007 at 01:36 PM CET #

Option 1 is very clear. Dr. Graversen, I think that clarity is much more important than brevity. In fact, I think that brevity is the least important attribute of any name in java.

Option 1 increases readability, understandability, and therefore reliability, and modifiability. Be shorter names hinder all of these software development goals.

Gesendet von Mike am November 21, 2007 at 05:09 PM CET #

Clarity is more important than brevity, but there's no need to go overboard. I'd go for option 2 as well, using 'Day' instead of 'DayOfMonth' and 'Weekday' instead of 'DayOfWeek'. Not sure that you need 'MinuteOfDay' since it's easily calculated (hour * 60 + minute) and probably not often required. Likewise HourOfMeridiem. If you want to include every conceivable option, you'll need a boolean (or an enum if you prefer) specifying the meridiem.

Gesendet von Andy am November 22, 2007 at 05:29 PM CET #