ii instead of i or jj instead of j. This allows you to search for loop iterator variables without results coming up everywhere the letter "i" is used in your file.What he was basically suggesting was that I change the code I write in order to accommodate the inadequacies of a tool, namely, textual searching.
This does not make sense to me at all. If I had a tool that understood the scoping rules of my language (e.g. Eclipse editing Java), I could select a variable and the tool would show me all the references to that variable, regardless of its name. Granted, this doesn't help if you're searching for all the loops that use the variable name, but (again, maybe this is just me) this is not something I ever do. And if I needed to, a regex would handle that (or find whole word).
Changing your work, no matter how slight, to fit your tools is an indicator that you need a better tool. Because basically, you've found a pattern. And whenever you find a pattern, you've found an opportunity for improvement. Changing your work to fit your tools is equivalent to optimization. You should only do it if you have to. In other words, if it is a bottleneck. And there's two ways to optimize for a bottleneck: from the top down, or from the bottom up. Doing it from the top down means you must always think about it. Doing it from the bottom up, abstracting the optimization away in a tool, means you don't have to think about it anymore. It is equivalent to pushing a process down to a lower level in the hierarchy. And the top level is the only level you have to think about.
...This brings up an interesting question. What is above me in the hierarchy? as it would be silly to think I was at the very top.
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