Stupid little iota of an idea

[Jesse Phillips]

%u Wrote:

> == Quote from bearophile (bearophileHUGS at lycos.com)'s article
> > D is currently very not-orthogonal.
> 
> I think you might the person to ask this:
> I've seen the concept of orthogonality pop up more and more and it was especially
> prominent in the awkward Go vs D reddit discussion, can you maybe explain what it
> exactly means?
> And, also how it relates to your enhancement?

Orthogonal is one of those terms people like to use because it makes them sound smart. Bearophile has provided a good explanation of how it relates to programming languages, and hasn't been abusing the term.

The discussion on Reddit was awkward because there where a few that couldn't consistently use 'orthogonal.' For example I got one person to say that for him orthogonality is when there are no exceptions to a rule/feature, yet somehow nested functions where not orthogonal.

Then even once everyone agrees on what the term means, there are good arguments as to why you wouldn't want to be completely orthogonal. And at this point many will just assert not being orthogonal is always bad, with the universal reason being "It is something more you have to remember." Which is not the purpose of orthogonality at all, and being orthogonal doesn't even mean you'll have less to remember.

So my opinion is to just make a statement of what is wrong and leave whether it is related to orthogonality out of it. And even if it is labeled correctly it best to be specific anyway so people aren't left guessing as to why.