Phango - questions

[Bill Baxter]

Kris wrote:
> "Bill Baxter" <dnewsgroup at billbaxter.com>
>> Yes, newcomers.  4 is less than 10.  That makes you newcomers relative to 
>> phobos and the D style guide Walter has had posted up on digitalmars.com 
>> that I presume is about as old as phobos.  That's all I meant.
> 
> Oh that's easy to answer: we understood those to be guidelines only, 

Yes, I agree.  But if the established guidelines work, you might as well 
use them...

> and 
> felt that some minor details would need adjustment for our purposes. I 
> recall there was some technical difficulty regarding module names at the 
> time, but don't recall the specifics right now.

.. and if they don't work out then you should have some good reasons 
why.  I just want to know what those reasons are so I can decide if I 
agree or not.  And I think that's what others are really after too, even 
if they prefix their requests with "You silly tango developers! your 
keyboard was a hamster and your library smells of elderberries!".

>>> As for conventions, it is my opinion that Tango doesn't have to justify 
>>> the choices made to anyone at this point. It's water under the bridge, 
>>> just as the some minor stylistic choices in phobos or D are now just 
>>> water under the bridge. As Walter already noted: Tango can use whatever 
>>> style it wants.
>> Yes, Tango can use whatever style it wants, but obviously some choices are 
>> better than others.  Nobody here is arguing that RanDoM CaSE for module 
>> names would be a good thing, for instance.
> 
> Are you sure about that? :p

Well maybe downs would be if he were participating. :-)

Personally, I'd really like to see Tango catch on in a big way.  The 
more of a standard it becomes the more pressure there is on Walter to 
make sure DMD integrates with it well, and the less library writers have 
to worry about depending on it in their code.

That being the case, I think every nay-sayer needs to have their 
concerns addressed in a convincing manner.  Saying "we had our reasons 
but I don't recall right now -- and besides your concern is trivial" 
doesn't convince anyone.

Here's another reason to spend some time convincing people to use Tango. 
  My dad is in a much more sales-oriented field than I am and he told me 
one time about how there are different kinds of customers.  Some 
customers walk in and will take anything you try to sell them.  But 
they'll also just as happily go down the street next week to the other 
guy and buy from him instead.  Other customers ask a lot of questions 
and require a lot of hand holding -- they're harder to get an initial 
sale out of, but once you've convinced them, often they're yours for 
life.  They'll even go out of their way to convince *other* people to go 
to your shop, and ignore things like price differences, just because 
you've earned their trust.

So, I think Sean's doing a good job building up that kind of trust for 
Tango.  When I read his posts I think, "ok these guys have thought 
through these things, I see the reasoning, and I kind of agree with it. 
  Hmm, maybe I can trust the other decisions Sean has been a part of as 
well."

>>> moving along, I believe Sean's two questions (posted much earlier, which 
>>> I repeated on his behalf) were intended to elicit some positive feedback?
>> Yes.  I do wish certain parties would stick to the issues here.
>> Elsewhere in this thread some constructive points have been mentioned pro 
>> and con lowercase module names.  I'll try to summarize without injecting 
>> any biases:
> 
> The effort is appreciated Bill, but realistically, Tango is not going to 
> change in this manner. 

That's cute.  You re-post Sean's questions asking for arguments about 
why to change, then when you get an answer you say "actually we don't 
care what you answer, Tango's not changing".

Well, I'd still like to suss out what the best practices are for D 
coding so that we can all use them and recommend them unequivocally and 
with solid reasons to all D coders.  Those practices may precisely be 
the ones used in Tango already.  I hope so.

As has been noted several times prior, one persons
> stylistic meat is another's stylistic poison. 

The point here that you keep ignoring is that there's more involved than 
just style or personal preference.  The tidbit about module/package name 
conflicts that Tom S brings up is another good objective reason for 
using Tango's convention.

--bb