Accessors, byLine, input ranges

[Michel Fortin]

On 2010-01-29 10:40:23 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu 
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> said:

> I'll tell you what I'd have liked: a landslide of responses to my 
> question revealing my mistaken ways and clarifying without a shade of a 
> doubt that byLine should be a @property. Or not. (I don't even care 
> which.)
> 
> The fact we're having a debate about this (and Steve even says it's a 
> clear cut case and there are other more ambiguous!) is worrisome. Take 
> this: I got different answers from _supporters_ of @property!

The problem entirely reside on the ambiguous semantics of 'byLine'. The 
name makes us think it does something while it does something else 
(consuming a line). If it did what we'd expect it should be a property, 
but since it does not it shouldn't be. Fix 'byLine', either by changing 
the name or changing what it does, and whether it's a property or not 
will become clear.


> A good convention is one that you apply without wasting time to think 
> of it every single time you use it: naming conventions, braces 
> conventions, even most class vs. struct conventions. The well-defined 
> ones work great because _they save you time_.

Well, you should probably care a little more about your naming 
convention. It's confusing, and it'll probably end up waisting the time 
of some people who'll wonder why it consumes lines before you read 
them. I was absolutely sure it didn't before someone pointed it out to 
me.


-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/