this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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I'm honestly prefer short but (usually) complete words. Somewhere along the line I realized that being explicit really helps when you need to change it later.
due to convention everybody understands what i and j are, I don't think they need longer names. If it's something more complicated than a counter or index then maybe you should be using a foreach loop instead (if language supports it)
I generally use 'count' for a counter and 'idx' for index.
I'm not using C or Java languages though - if I were I would probably go with the more classic terse approach.
Also, if I'm reviewing a PR and I have to load more of the diff context to understand what a variable represents, then that variable has the wrong name.
Even as an embedded C developer I use "idx" and "count" instead of "i". Not just because I'm a member of the "slightly longer but more descriptive names are better" gang, but also for searchability. If I'm trying to track down where an array is accessed in a loop, for example, "idx" is more likely to take me only to the results I'm looking for and not also the "i" in int8_t or whatever.