Stupid little iota of an idea

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 09.02.2011 21:08, schrieb Ary Manzana:
> On 2/9/11 3:54 PM, bearophile wrote:
>> - There is no need to learn to use a function with a weird syntax like iota,
>> coming from APL. This makes Phobos and learning D a bit simpler.
> 
> I would recommend stop using "weird" names for functions. Sorry if this sounds a
> little harsh but the only reason I see this function is called "iota" is to
> demonstrate knowledge (or to sound cool). But programmers using a language don't
> care about whether the other programmer demonstrates knowledge behind a function
> name, they just want to get things done, fast.
> 
> I mean, if I want to create a range of numbers I would search "range". "iota"
> will never, ever come to my mind. D has to be more open to public, not only to
> people who programmed in APL, Go or are mathematics freaks. Guess how a range is
> called in Ruby? That's right, Range.
> 
> Another example: retro. The documentation says "iterates a bidirectional name
> backwards". Hm, where does "retro" appear in that text? If I want to iterate it
> backwards, or to reverse the order, the first thing I would write is
> reverse(range) or backwards(range), "retro" would never come to my mind.
> 
> (and no, replies like "you can always alias xxx" are not accepted :-P)

I agree that iota is a bad name, but "Range" is a bad name because it's already
used in D.

Cheers,
- Daniel