Whither Tango?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

yigal chripun wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:
> 
>> yigal chripun wrote:
>>> Nick Sabalausky Wrote:
>>> 
>>>> "Justin Johansson" <no at spam.com> wrote in message 
>>>> news:hlop1u$o1m$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>>>> Right, that's what I meant. Use a word starting with
>>>>>> "retro-" when talking to a english-speaking person, and
>>>>>> even if they're uneducated, they'll most likely have a good
>>>>>> idea what is meant by that prefix.
>>>>> What about persons with English not as a first language?
>>>>> 
>>>> I do realize that different native languages can be an issue,
>>>> but at some point a library has to use *some* language, and the
>>>>  established standard for phobos just happens to be english. If
>>>> we start banning terms from use in a language or a library on
>>>> the basis of whether a non-native english speaker is likely to
>>>> know it, then I suspect (though I admit that I don't know for
>>>> certain) you'd have to eliminate most of the given
>>>> language/library because there's no guarantee non-native
>>>> speakers would know any of it.
>>>> 
>>>> For instance, if there were a russian-langauge library, and I
>>>> tried to use it, I wouldn't understand any of the words except
>>>> nyet and da (and I'm not even sure of the correct spellings of
>>>> those - in either roman or cyrillic). And I would be well aware
>>>> that I wouldn't be able to assume I knew what something did
>>>> without a little digging. Of course, I certainly sympathize
>>>> that this can be a pain for non-native-english-speaking
>>>> programmers, and that it's an issue native english speaking
>>>> programmers like me will probably never be able to truly
>>>> understand, but until we get to some hypothetcal point in the
>>>> future where everyone speaks the same language, then, again, at
>>>> some point there really is no choice but to just assume at
>>>> least some particular language.
>>>> 
>>>> Besides, computer terminology is already, at best, just a bunch
>>>> of vague meaphors anyway. When I started programing, it took me
>>>> all of about a minute to learn that "string" had nothing to do
>>>> with the stuff cloth is made of and stitched together with. And
>>>> "SCSI" doesn't mean a damn thing at all, even to an english
>>>> speaker, but I still learned it quickly enough. So even if I
>>>> wasn't familiar with "retro" as anything other than "old
>>>> style", I'm sure I still could have gotten used to it very
>>>> quickly, especially considering that in 99.99% of contexts it's
>>>> going to be pretty damn clear that it's not being used to refer
>>>> to bell-bottoms, chome appliances, and flock-of-seagulls
>>>> haircuts.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> This is being silly (and needlessly long). There's no need to
>>> collect statistics on the level of English of non-native D
>>> programmers worldwide to decide what name to use for a function.
>>> 
>>> It's very simple actually: you want to name a function that
>>> reverses your range and you have several valid names for it,
>>> please choose the most common word (the first that comes to mind)
>>> which in this case is (surprise!) - "reverse". (or any variation
>>> that makes sense in this particular case, like "reversed")
>>> 
>>> simple logic, don't you agree? Any human language has more than
>>> one way to express oneself. The best way to reach a wide (and 
>>> international) audience is to use the most common phrases - don't
>>> go all academic on me with Latin or Shakespearean words and don't
>>> go getho on me with misspelled slang. Is that so much to ask for?
>>> 
>> There's no reason to get agitated as nobody is trying to push 
>> incomprehensible crap on anyone. The problem I was confronted with
>> was:
>> 
>> (a) "reverse" was already taken;
>> 
>> (b) I found "reversed" too subtly different from "reverse".
>> Besides, it wasn't clear to me that it was descriptive enough -
>> e.g. some people might believe that "reversed" returns a reversed
>> copy of the range;
>> 
>> (c) I was looking for a short name because I presume the function
>> will be used often;
>> 
>> (d) In my experience names that are slightly odd but evocative tend
>> to stick to memory.
>> 
>> So I chose "retro". What exactly seems to be the problem? If half
>> of Phobos' names were weird, I'd say fine, but this discussion
>> latched on poor "retro" and "iota" as if posters' lives depended on
>> it. Again: how exactly are these two names preventing you from
>> getting work done?
>> 
>> 
>> Andrei
> 
> you just refuse to get it.

Well that doesn't quite set up the stage nicely for a dialog. I 
explained you what constraints I was under when choosing one particular 
name. You then ignore the entire explanation by labeling me as 
illogically stubborn. At the same time, you keep on waxing indignant 
about a very general problem with Phobos but consistently omit to 
provide more supporting evidence than "retro" and "iota".

> It's not the specific retro function that
> is so frustrating to me. any public API (and especially so for the
> standard library) *must* have a consistent naming scheme. It *must*
> prefer clarity over shortness and it *must* be designed such that it
> will lead to easier understanding of code using it _without_
> referring to the manual every function call. phobos fails on all the
> above.

I agree that Phobos, being a palimpsest[1] on which several people 
wrote, currently mixes a number of styles and names. Would be great if 
you added some concrete details that would help us improve things. What 
would be a good example of Phobos code that is currently next to 
incomprehensible due to poor choices of names, and what would be a good 
consistent naming scheme that would improve on that?


Andrei

[1] The nerve!