rails/rails — comment on commit 0306f82e0c3cda3aad1b45eb0c3a359c254b62cc
File: railties/lib/rails/generators/rails/app/templates/config/environments/development.rb.tt line 31
By fxn:

I see your point on having a shorter name.

However, I normally use units in variable names because when you read the configuration line, or when they appear scattered in docs, or when you read the source code using them, you have *zero* extra brain cycles going on. No wondering. No context switching. It reads straight without ambiguity. See for example https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activerecord/lib/active_record/explain.rb#L19-34, it is self-documented and clear.

@yfeldblum Active Support has a Duration class that represents a period of time. That's what you get from 0.5.seconds, a duration object. But I personally don't like very much that the contract is to pass a duration object. It makes sense logically, but passing a float with a number of seconds also makes sense and it is simpler.

Those are my personal choices, and I've tried to reason why I prefer that variable name (of course I thought carefully about that parameter name for this patch). But on the other hand this is not a big deal either, if you feel strong about it please feel free to change it. Only take care that the resulting global s/// does not leave some ambiguous docs or comments.