Programmer in Space<< Kagan Research Sold | Main | Computing's Tide Carries Fun and Games Back to the Data Center >> David Schatsky | April 10, 2007, 10:31 PM Charles Simonyi, the billionaire software architect who oversaw the development of Word and Excel at Microsoft, has recently blasted into space. Among his many accomplishments, he is credited with devising a computer programming naming convention known as Hungarian Notation. When I was doing Visual Basic programming, I learned to code using Hungarian Notation before I knew who Simonyi was. I love naming conventions. They provide structure and regularity, and help make others' code intelligible. Poorly chosen names in programming are like poorly chosen words in prose. You may still get your point across, but it's easy to get lost. It's always worth taking a few moments to find the right word--and the right variable name. I was thrilled to meet Simonyi years later at a dinner in New York. In chatting we discovered that a colleague at his current company, Intential Software, was a former colleague of mine at an artificial intelligence startup when I was just starting my career. "A really smart guy," Simonyi told me. Safe travels, Charles. |
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