Neither is it "the point" in programming. You should be concerned with communication and have every right to get upset when someone is being needlessly convoluted but that's as much of a point in programming as it is in math, physics, or any domain.
I mean the reason we get mad at this is because it is someone destroying "society" in some sense. Even if that society is your team or just the set of programmers. It would be a pretty dick move were I to just use a word that significantly diverged from conventional meaning and expected you to mull it over. Similarly if I drop a unknown out of context math equation. It would be meaningless.
And I'm on your side, really! I strongly advocate for documenting. And let's be real, the conclusion of your argument more strongly argues for documentation than good variable names. Because variable names are much more constrained and much more easily misinterpreted considering how any word has multiple definitions. Surrounding code is often insufficient to derive necessary contextualization.
I mean the reason we get mad at this is because it is someone destroying "society" in some sense. Even if that society is your team or just the set of programmers. It would be a pretty dick move were I to just use a word that significantly diverged from conventional meaning and expected you to mull it over. Similarly if I drop a unknown out of context math equation. It would be meaningless.
And I'm on your side, really! I strongly advocate for documenting. And let's be real, the conclusion of your argument more strongly argues for documentation than good variable names. Because variable names are much more constrained and much more easily misinterpreted considering how any word has multiple definitions. Surrounding code is often insufficient to derive necessary contextualization.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43874738