Re: [Flightgear-devel] route manager crash

[Tobias D. <tda...@gm...>]

> Ah, this is my fault - basically the code is as you describe - mostly
> working, some bugs, and some missing features. What I was expecting
> would happen is people would come back to me with feedback on
> improvements, bugs, changes etc to gradually hit a stable point, but
> in general I didn’t get much feedback on it, so the ‘not quite
> decided’ bits and bugs have remained.

Well, yes, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing - if you document
things, people will start coding against it more, and once they do,
you'll get more feedback. Don't count on users who aren't involved in
development in any way to report bugs - the most valuable feedback is
going to come from people who try to work with the code in some way.

> (To me the GPS / route-manager serve as the ‘documentation’, as well
> as asking questions here, but I realise some people would prefer a
> README.md in Docs, which we could still do of course)

README, yes, for things like "how does it all fit together", and "how
do I use this"; but also some inline doc comments to explain the
nitty-gritty technical details. What does this field represent, why is
this code here, what is the purpose of this, that kind of thing.

> I miss-rememebred what happened here - we used the snake-case names
> for compatibility with some existing Nasal FMS code. I really think
> the snake_case names are ugly but it would be better to be consistent,
> so we’re probably stuck with them now :(

Eh, potayto potahto; as long as it's clear which gets used.

> Yep. Regardless of the naming syntax, this is a good reason to use
> longer names: hold_parameter or hold_value might be clearer?

Disagree; these names are so generic that they hardly mean anything. A
hold is defined by about half a dozen "parameters", so `hold_parameter`
doesn't tell you anything except that it is somehow related to a hold.
It's not about length, but about descriptiveness, hitting the right
degree of specificity - too specific, and you get confusion because the
value might be something that the name doesn't suggest; too generic, and
you're not really saying what it is at all.

So, idk, `hold_distance_mode`, maybe?