Phango - questions

[Don Clugston]

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, 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.
> 
> 
>>> 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
> 
> 
>>> 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. As has been noted several times prior, one persons 
> stylistic meat is another's stylistic poison. There's no resolving that, and 
> we have no wish to attempt to. It's a dilemma, and the kind of religious 
> distinction that people would kill each other for in the past (and still do, 
> actually).
> 
> Certain individuals cannot see past that, and find bitter resentment in the 
> use of the shift-key here and there. Yet, the same folks are staying quiet 
> about toString() and so on. Let's face it, function/method names are used 
> more often than import names for example. So, I feel (a) this issue is daft 
> and/or myopic to begin with (b) there's nothing that could be done without 
> upsetting the stylistic preferences of others (c) there's little value in 
> paying heed to the opinion of those who "refuse" to use a library simply 
> because it doesn't adhere to one tiny stylistic notion, which couldn't in 
> practice be changed anyway. Better for us to listen to people who are 
> willing to be a little flexible.
> 
> Cheers;

Kris -
I think there's a legitimate concern here which you've been ignoring. It would 
be helpful to give some background as to why Tango uses the conventions it does. 
And my guess is that the primary reason Tango uses the conventions it does, is 
that you have a Java background!

Ultimately, I suspect that the underlying conflict arises because Tango has 
heavy Java influence, whereas Phobos is mostly modelled on the C standard library.

Incidentally, one stylistic change between Phobos and Tango which hasn't been 
mentioned, is that Phobos uses a flat structure (except for a couple of things 
like std.c.windows.windows!). IMHO, the flat structure is decidedly inferior.

As Andrei said before, D can expect a flood of refugees from C++ over the next 
couple of years. To be hospitable to them, we need to recognize that they'll be 
suffering from culture shock. This doesn't necessarily mean that Tango needs to 
change anything, but a more sympathetic attitude is really important. The major 
stumbling blocks deserve a little explanation.

-Don.