duck!

[Walter Bright]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2010 16:31:34 -0400, Walter Bright 
> <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> 
>> If I google for "adapt for D" I'll get a hopeless mess of irrelevant 
>> links. "duck typing for D" should be much better. Remember that google 
>> ranks pages by relevance, and searching for "duck" will give higher 
>> ranking for pages with "duck" in the url, title, headings, etc. That's 
>> just what we want.
> 
> And it should come up with the page on digitalmars.com titled 'duck 
> typing in D' which describes how to use templates or the adaptTo type to 
> achieve duck typing.


When writing fiction, it's a good idea to constantly shift which words used to 
describe something. But when writing tech manuals, and when making things search 
engine friendly, it pays to use a single term and use it consistently.

For example, once upon a time I read some article on arrays, and it variously 
referred to the array "elements", "entries", and "values". Really, that sucked, 
as the reader was left being not quite sure if they meant the same thing or not.

If you expect people to search for "duck typing" (and I do) then why stick 
another level of indirection? Call it a "duck". When you find yourself 
constantly saying "duck typing: see adaptTo", then you named it wrong.