Joel on Hungarian

I just got around to reading the third installment of Joel On Software's essays on the new FogBugz release.

In it he extolls the virtues of Hungarian notation. I was somewhat taken aback, since Joel usually makes so much sense and Hungarian is such an abomination, but then I noticed the context.

Hungarian notation was originally developed to overcome a deficiency in the C language and in C compilers -- weak type checking. Using HN you could do the "type checking" by eyeball rather than relying on the compiler. Once the language and compilers got smart enough to complain when you tried to assign the address of a SnaggleWhomp to a pointer to DeedleBlang then the justification for Hungarian disappeared -- leaving only it's significant drawbacks. artThe adjMost advImportant prepOf adjithinkThese nounsubjDrawbacks verbWas adjUnreadable nounobjCode.

However, the reason Joel gives for valuing Hungarian is that the home-grown Thistle compiler they use at Fog Creek has trouble compiling VB Net without it. Aha-- once again you have a defective language and a deficient compiler to compensate for and Hungarian rides again!