Stupid little iota of an idea

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/10/11 9:49 AM, Ary Manzana wrote:
> On 2/10/11 12:34 PM, Max Samukha wrote:
>> On 02/10/2011 05:18 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 2/10/11 12:30 AM, Olivier Pisano wrote:
>>>> Le 09/02/2011 21:08, Ary Manzana a écrit :
>>>>> 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)
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I agree iota is a bad name.
>>>
>>> Fifth result of simply googling the entire Web for "iota":
>>>
>>> http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/iota.html
>>>
>>>
>>> Andrei
>>
>> Google search takes your preferences into account. They must be tracking
>> your search history, peeking into your gmail accounts etc. I searched
>> for 'iota' and couldn't find the STL link on the first 5 pages.
>
> Same here. And 5th isn't very good. 1st is very good. :-P

One misconception is that iota is a range of numbers. It's not. The step 
is an important part of it.

Andrei