this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Leaning to program on 8-bit machines with 8k of RAM means that even today I abbreviate names.

Plus it was accepted wisdom that shorter variable names were faster for the BASIC interpreter.

[–] vox@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

~~variables don't make it to the compiled binary tho, except debug symbols of course if have those enabled (but deploying them to an embeeded system is a terrible idea, they can remain on the host system)~~

oh you mean on not for

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah for interpreted BASIC.

But even after moving to writing assembly language on a separate PC devkit there was still the habit of using short names.

I think that some assemblers had limits on name size.