1513: Code Quality

2015-04-17T13:15:55Z

Kiaulen: Added snake case reference.

{{comic
| number = 1513
| date = April 17, 2015
| title = Code Quality
| image = code quality.png
| titletext = I honestly didn't think you could even USE emoji in variable names. Or that there were so many different crying ones.
}}

==Explanation==

{{incomplete| Needs fine-tuning and explaining of Ponytail's three comments}}
Cueball asks Ponytail to look at some source code that he has written, warning her that he is self-taught so his code probably won't be written the way she is used to. Although few programming languages require a perfectly rigid style so long as the code is syntactically accurate, most programmers follow some sort of {{w|Programming_style|style}} to make the code easier to read. This includes indenting lines to show levels and using descriptive variable identifiers with {{w|CamelCase|"camel case"}} or snake_case capitalization (capitalizing each word except for the first, and separating lowercase words with underscores, respectively). In spite of Ponytail's initial (polite) optimism, she comments in three increasingly harsh and absurd similes. Firstly, she suggests that reading his code is like being in a house built by an unskilled child, using a small axe to put together what he thought was a house based on a picture, which could be a reference to minecraft. Secondly, she suggests that it looks like a salad recipe, written by a corporate lawyer (who are notoriously difficult to understand), on a phone with autocorrect that only corrected things to formulas from Microsft Excel (which are notoriously complicated). Thirdly, she suggests that it is a transcript of the dialogue of couple who want to buy furniture at {{w|IKEA}} and can't agree in what to buy; that transcript could have been randomly edited until the computer compiled it with no errors. Finally, Cueball surrenders and makes the rather weak assurance that he will read “a style guide”—he doesn't think that following a complete course is in order.

A common technique for self-taught programmers is to follow and adapt tutorials, and to find examples of similar problems being solved and try to copy the code. This can (but doesn't always) lead to code that is hard to follow or otherwise "messy" as various different pieces of code are {{w|Jury_rig|jury-rigged}} together and tinkered with until they seem to work. Once a piece of code is working, it is usually considered too hard to go back and rewrite it to be cleaner or clearer, also at the risk of breaking something that has been working. This practice is known as {{w|refactoring}} and code projects that incorporate cycles of refactoring tend to be easier to read and maintain than those that don't.

The title text refers to {{w|emoji}}, or "smiley faces". They exist in Unicode, or can be simulated using ASCII characters. Many languages will allow variable names to include underscores, so a variety of sad face ASCII emoji will be legal variable names, such as <code>T_T</code>, <code>p_q</code>, <code>ioi</code> etc. Progressively more possible crying-face emoji are possible if variables can include [http://hexascii.com/sad-emoticons/ UTF-8 characters] or full Unicode.

In the realm of Unicode, there are many crying emojis, as the comic states (e.g. 😢,😭,😂,😿,😹) In most programming languages it would be impossible to use them in variable names, as the symbols would break the language's syntax rules. A notable exception to this is {{w|Swift (programming language)|Swift}}, Apple's new programming language, in which the code can understand and use emojis in variables. Java, as another example, allows unicode characters in variable names as long as they are letter, numeric, combining or non-formatting marks. (See [http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-3.html#jls-3.8] and [http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Character.html#isUnicodeIdentifierPart%28int%29]). Also, some C++ compilers support foreign Unicode characters and can have emoji in that manner.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball showing Ponytail his laptop]
:Cueball: Keep in mind that I'm self-taught, so my code may be a little messy.
:Ponytail: Lemme see - I'm sure it's fine.

:[Ponytail sits at desk]
:Ponytail: ...Wow. This is like being in a house built by a child using nothing but a hatchet and a picture of a house.

:Ponytail: It's like a salad recipe written by a corporate lawyer using a phone autocorrect that only knew Excel formulas.

:Ponytail: It's like someone took a transcript of a couple arguing at IKEA and made random edits until it compiled without errors.
:Cueball: '''''Okay,''''' I'll read a style guide.

{{comic discussion}}


[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

1280: Mystery News

2013-10-21T13:28:57Z

Kiaulen: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1280
| date = October 20, 2013
| title = Mystery News
| image = mystery news.png
| titletext = If you find and stop the video, but you've--against all odds--gotten curious about the trade summit, just leave the tab opened. It will mysteriously start playing again 30 minutes later!
}}

==Explanation==
With the introduction of tabbed browsing, many users, even on widescreens, will have so many tabs open that it is hard to find any given one. At 44 tabs on chrome on a 1080p screen, the user can no longer see any text on the tabs. Long before this point (~20 tabs), the text is so short as to be unusable. Randall refers to this tendency to open many tabs without closing them in this comic.

When you have your browser set to open the tabs that were open the last time you closed it, it will reload all tabs on startup (can be different for modern browsers) thus autoplaying the video. The same thing happens if a webpage silently reloads in the background for whatever reason.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sitting at a laptop.]
:Laptop: It's day five of the trade summit, and still no...
:Cueball: ''Dammit''
:''click click click''

:I get most of my news from autoplaying videos in browser tabs I can't find.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1513: Code Quality

1280: Mystery News