Count vs Number of

Question

I am a software engineer and I struggle with the variable names, regarding this scope, what would be the best suited term for a counter.

For example if I want to count parts, would "Parts Counted" a better name than "Number Of Parts", thanks in advance, any advice would be very appreciated.

Edit

The suggestion from Juan José Melero Gómez is very interesting, i will put it here in order to use it as added in info:

in order to refer to a certain quantity of elements, in natural language we use "number of elements", "amount of elements" or "quantity of elements". However, in the IT field, where variable names need to be really shortened concatenated versions of the natural language, what would be a "correct" way to shorten these expressions? "elementCount" is something we see often, but as non-native speakers, we cannot tell if it's "correct" or whether we may prefer to use "elementAmount" or "elementQuantity" instead because of nuances

Answer 1

"Number of parts" implies that this is the number of parts that actually exist.

"Parts counted" is just the number we have been able to count, implying we don't know how many there really are in total.

Use the first if you know for sure that you have identified all the parts.

I am a programmer myself, so understand the confusion as "count" is generally used in code to mean the actual number that exists (e.g. length of a list). This is not the common Englisg usage though.

Answer 2

Both "Parts Counted" and "Number Of Parts" are (or at least can be depending on application) accurate. In most code I see, number of parts (or numParts or num_parts, etc.) is used most frequently for counters.

However, if you wanted to be very clear and explicit, you might choose parts counted for a counter because it implies "parts counted so far" whereas number of parts when used for a counter implies "number of parts counted so far." You're assuming/implying less.

You might decide to use number of parts when you assign a static integer value to a variable and this does not get updated (e.g., after a count, or if the value is already known). You might decide to use parts counted when the variable is in use while it is changing. For example, you are keeping track of how many times you've counted an iteration of a loop and using it to decide some action or termination condition within the loop.