I’ve long felt that much was wrong with Hungarian Notation, but would still find myself using something similar from time to time. Since I couldn’t decide if this was right behavior that felt wrong, or wrong behavior that felt right, it was satisfying to discover that the usual culprits were to blame. Sure enough, someone had taken a good idea and run with it in entirely the wrong direction.

The Wikipedia article mentions some of this, but this article by Joel Spolsky is worth reading: “Making Wrong Code Look Wrong” Actually, many of Joel’s articles are worth reading, but this one covers the details of why Hungarian isn’t evil when you understand what Charles Simonyi actually had in mind.

One of the projects I would eventually like to attempt is a general computer literacy program. It is unfortunate that few exist, creating a situation similar to that of literacy in the Middle Ages. This article is an attempt to identify the failings of existing courses, and to create a curriculum that can produce literate individuals.

There are cultures that maintain high levels of technical literacy, and it is perhaps unfair to hold all users to such high standards. Your average person would not be expected to sit down and churn out text in the style of Tolkien, much less be able to advance to Saramago’s creative disregard for punctuation. One would, however, expect them to be able to read such texts with a decent degree of comprehension.

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