I had a post with most of the same stuff you said saved for after lunch but you beat me to it with a more precise explanation. I haven't touched C in years but it wasn't difficult to understand the code, though a couple of comments would have made it quicker to parse.
Perhaps this is the effect that high level languages are having on developers - anything that DoesntHaveExplicitNames is classed as confusing and syntax flexibility is seen as wrong. In the web development field, I often get weird looks for writing one line if statement bodies. A ternary operator usually yields furrowed eyebrows for a few seconds. An issue of style over substance, IMO.
Then again, I'm sure that ASM developers looked at C developers the same way.
Probably, the key part of what you said, is "couple of comments". Makes a huge difference if the same convention is on,say, 100,000 LOC, and the people who wrote it didnt give proper comments and left the company! :P
Speaking on naming conventions:
This is the name of a class in Chromium source code (C++): 'BufferedSpdyFramerVisitorInterface' .
The codebase is that meticulous! For a guy who wanted to learn about browser implementation,and downloaded the codebase,this is good.
These meticulous naming conventions- has it anything to do with using a full-blown ide vs vim?
> These meticulous naming conventions- has it anything to do with using a full-blown ide vs vim?
What would you think that?
If it's because of auto-complete, please understand that this is 2012, and vim is not [just] vi. There are several different flavors of auto-complete available in vim; some built in, some as extensions.
Not to mention that there's eclim for full-scale Eclipse completion and ctags which provides almost the same functionality (though not as intelligently).
Perhaps this is the effect that high level languages are having on developers - anything that DoesntHaveExplicitNames is classed as confusing and syntax flexibility is seen as wrong. In the web development field, I often get weird looks for writing one line if statement bodies. A ternary operator usually yields furrowed eyebrows for a few seconds. An issue of style over substance, IMO.
Then again, I'm sure that ASM developers looked at C developers the same way.