Please stop using foo, bar, baz

  • Published on 2023-03-11

TLDR: stop using foo, bar, baz, ... in your examples. Use meaningful examples, or use something a little more cognitively managable like parent, child, or a, b, c, or x, y, z, or item1, item2, item3, etc.

Why not foo bar baz?

These terms are often seen in code examples when teaching new concepts. As someone is trying to learn a new concept, the cognitive overhead to map what foo represents, or what bar represents is unnecessary:

  • They have no inherent meaning
  • They have no ordering, no hierarchy
  • Bar and baz are barely distinguishable

That is all.