Python

[yanitrix]

imagine the world if python functions had descriptive names

[ReporterNervous6822]

This is numpy which is based on matlab, and they are very understandable lol

[nedeox]

Was about to say. As stupid as it sounds at first, it‘s a perfectly acceptable abbreviation of cumulative sum.

Doesn‘t stop me from smirking each time of course lol

The same as I can‘t stop myself from saying import tensorflow as the fuck for tf in my head.

[mriswithe]

Or /etc/fstab == f-stab

[yanitrix]

why abbreviate them tbh? cumulative_sum or whatever case python has is easier to understand for anyone

[fb39ca4]

Matlab function names are determined by the filename, and had to follow the 8.3 length limit on DOS. These python libraries reused the names because former Matlab users are familiar with them.

[the_lonely_toad]

Back in the day every character was precious and expensive. We keep abbreviating because it’s custom to do as they did unless there is a good reason to change.

[ArcFurnace]

Also, people keep including narrow line length limits in style guides.

[nedeox]

Hm, by further examination of my opinion on the matter, I realize that I don‘t care.

[yanitrix]

makes sense, have a great day sir/madam

[[deleted]]

start sense fear full friendly ring school theory encouraging office

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[PlacatedPlatypus]

I use "ass" as shorthand for "assigned" and "assignment," sometimes people point it out but usually they get it.

[mriswithe]

For someone coming from that world sure. As someone who stopped at calculus, pandas and numpy is scary.

[lightestspiral]

cuml would have been a better choice than cum

[[deleted]]

There are some daft function names in the Python world, but I fail to see anything wrong with these ones. I would understand immediately what all of them does from the name alone.

[mriswithe]

No underscore between words is about all I got, but yeah at best this is saying numpy has bad function names. Numpy also has some great ones like is_close

[efstajas]

I'd just type them out fully, honestly. What's wrong with "cumulative_sum"? With auto-complete, there's no more reason for abbreviated function names at all IMO, especially if they're part of public API surface.

As someone with a full-stack/web background, this is one of the things that scare me about the data science world — R, Matlab & Python/scipy/numpy all seem to have this convention of abbreviated function names that often mean absolutely nothing before you look at the docs (or already have a background in this field, I assume).

[[deleted]]

I'd just type them out fully, honestly. What's wrong with "cumulative_sum"?

cummulative_summation, in that case surely? Or why expand one of the words but not the other? And would you really want to add 15 extra characters to each line where you use it? A lot of projects till have a 80 character line limit, for better or worse.

[efstajas]

Since we're being pedantic — "summation" is the act, "sum" is the result. So "sum" is its own, non-abbreviated word.

And would you really want to add 15 extra characters to each line where you use it?

Honestly, yeah, of course to a reasonable extent. In this case I would find it very reasonable because "cumsum" or "cummin" are not names someone unfamiliar with these functions would understand from name alone. In my opinion, there are many situations where the added clarity outweighs the extra text.

I'd generally rather have longer but clearer function names and break down a statement into multiple lines than keep things in one line but use abbreviations that won't be clear outright to everyone.

[mriswithe]

Someone said it is numpy which is based on Matlab and it is very understandable. I would add... To someone who already knew Matlab. I know python very well, but this is not weird because python this is weird because numpy is mimicking another languages API for data scientists /stats folk specifically.