> I realize I code a lot slower now than in the past and that I write much fewer lines of code. It’s both good and bad because sometimes I’d even spend hours just trying to properly name a variable.
I think the important thing happening here is more than just naming. You’re taking the time to fully consider what you’re doing with the new variable in order to name it. That’s time very rarely wasted.
- does the carefully selected name does make sense for other readers, future self included? That is, does it help to make things easier to understand for them?
- a good name can be reused extensively over your whole career, so a few hours might well be well invested time from this perspective if you plan to keep a foot in the technical side of the story all along. Actually, a good name is surely something you might have the opportunity to reuse outside a coding context.
I think the important thing happening here is more than just naming. You’re taking the time to fully consider what you’re doing with the new variable in order to name it. That’s time very rarely wasted.