2015-05-24 - Shakespeare Wasn’t a Programmer

There’s a line in one of William Shakespeare's plays that goes something like “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. The idea being that what you call something doesn’t impact what it is. A rose doesn’t change its smell because you call it something else. This is not the case in programming where something’s name determines what it is.

There are lots of named things in a program and the names chosen are used to give meaning to their usage within the program. A variable name describes what data it holds. A function name describes what it does. It’s possible to have identical variables with identical data that are differentiated because of their name. An account object may have two floating point values, one named “Credits” and one named “Debits”. They could be stored using the same pattern and contain the same value but because of their names we know they are different.

Going even further without a type a variable is just a set of bits. It’s possible to take a floating point value and treat it as an integer or as a series of characters. The type is required to give meaning to the data stored but that type can be changed and the meaning of the data along with it.

That’s the problem with working in a medium where you’re making everything.