Stupid little iota of an idea

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday 12 February 2011 07:34:43 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 2/12/11 8:21 AM, bearophile wrote:
> > Jonathan M Davis:
> >> On Saturday 12 February 2011 03:25:29 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> >>> And that's part of what makes it best.
> >> 
> >> Agreed.
> > 
> > If you agree on that, then you can't be a designer for a public API.
> 
> Oops. Someone stop the release of 2.052 NOW! :o)

LOL. It would be true that I have now named a rather large portion of the 
functions in Phobos now thanks to std.datetime. However, those tend to have very 
descriptive names. They also tended to be functions which were relatively easy 
to name.

Honestly, I never would have named iota iota. It isn't descriptive at all. But 
given that we already _have_ the name and there is a precedent for it, I see no 
reason to change it. It's short and memorable, and you're not going to 
misunderstand what it means based on its name.

So, no I wouldn't have chosen iota if I were naming it, but I don't think that 
it's worth breaking code for now. Since we have it, I say take advantage of the 
fact that it's short and memorable and just leave it.

- Jonathan M Davis