Man, no kidding. I had a customer where I had to make some modifications to an app from a previous consultant. What should have taken me hours ended up taking days as I traced around variables and even function names that were things like "rc" and "a" and "btf" - you get the idea. The code looked like it had been through an obfuscator or something, but the sad thing was that it was just written that way.

So, Scott, I feel your pain. That was not a happy time for me ;-)

We are having the same problem. We even rewrote out programming standards to eleviate this issue, but it still persist. Old happens die hard, be it older programming standards, or people use to writing for older languages. .NET doesn't have the same character limitations of some of the legacy languages that people in the banking biz are use to dealing with. So day, so day they will all see how cool .NET really is.

My personal bugbear is the leftover FORTRAN crap. .NET code where all the variables are named ACCTNM and IDNTNM. If I have to look at a document to figure out that IDNTNM == IdentifierName and not IdentifierNumber it's going to end up costing somebody way too much.

It's time to get The Donald hairpiece out and say "You're fired."

Exactly. SmtmsItsHrd2FgrOtWhtNtntOfARtnIs. GdNmCnvntnsWdRlyHlpMkPgmMntable.

AMEN! Just as tasty are those who force a alphanumeric scheme on the database to make it internationalizable! ST102STA for a column name.
/EndVent - I actually struggle with this sometimes. I had been playing with VS.NET so much for so long with intellisense, I really wonder if I know how to type anymore or am just a two characters and ctrl+space-er. I had the occasion to have to write some code in *GASP* notepad.net a short while ago and found myself falling into shorthand since it was just a mock-up on something. (Don't get me started on how too often mock-ups become production code).

This way, there won't be any need for code obfuscators...