Question

Is there anything to be gained memorywise and speedwise by having shorter variable-names in a language like python?

And if so, what kind of situations would it be reasonable to consider this?

Note

I’m in no way advocating short variable names, I’m just wondering, please (re)read the question.

Note 2
Please, I do understand the value of descriptive variable names. I’ve looked at enough code to prefer descriptive names over shorter names, and understand the value of it. A plain No doesn’t really help.

Answer 1

There’s a problem with “like python”, because not all interpreted languages are the same.

With a purely-interpreted language it would have more of an impact than with one like Python that has a pre-compile step. Strictly this isn’t a language difference (you could have one Javascript engine that precompiles, and one that doesn’t), but it does affect the answer to this question.

Stretching out “like python” to include every interpreted language, I’d say the answer is “yes, for some of them, at least some of the time”. The next question is, “how much”.

In 1997 through to early 1998 I was working on some rather complicated javascript code that made use of some of the new features of Netscape Navigator 4 and Internet Explorer 4. This was a humongous javascript file for the time – when the prevalence of dial-up meant that every kilobyte counted in terms of site speed.

For this reason, we used a minimiser script. The main thing this did, was to re-write variables to be shorter (lastHeight becomes a, userSel becmomes b and so on).

Not only did it reduce the download time, but it did also make one of the heavier functions appreciably faster. But only appreciable if you were someone who spent their whole working day looking at nothing else, which pretty much meant me and one other colleague.

So yes, if we put Javascript into the “like python” category as far as interpretation goes, then it can make a difference, under the following conditions:

1. It was running on Pentium, Pentium Pro and 486s (Pentium II was out then, but we didn’t have any). I got a new machine part-way through the project, which meant I went from 133MHz to 166MHz.
2. It was a rather large piece of nasty looping (most of the script had no appreciable difference).
3. It was running on a script-engine from 15years ago with none of the improvements in script-engine performance that have been made since.

And it still didn’t make that much difference.

We can assume for that, that some other interpreted languages are also affected to a similarly minute degree.

Even in 1997 though, I wouldn’t have bothered were it not that it coincidentally gave me another advantage, and I certainly wasn’t working on the minimised version.