Stupid little iota of an idea

[Max Samukha]

On 02/12/2011 04:52 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Saturday 12 February 2011 06:21:15 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.
>
> I'm not saying that you should typically pick function names that way. But given
> that we already have iota, have already had iota for some time, and that there
> is already a C++ function by the same name that does the same thing, I see no
> reason to change it. It's nice and memorable, and it doesn't create confusion
> based on misunderstanding its name. Sure, a name that clearly says what it does
> would be nice, but I don't really like any of the names that have been
> suggested, and iota has worked just fine thus far.

Andrei's minion in me is feeling the urge to add that "iota" is also 
used in Go (for generating consecutive integers at compile-time, 
http://golang.org/doc/go_spec.html#Iota), and since Go is supposed to 
grow popular, "iota" will gain more popularity as well.

>
> I'm not suggesting that we go and name functions sigma and gamma or xyzzy or
> whatnot just because they mean nothing and are memorable. I'm saying that
> because we already have a function name which is memorable, I see no reason to
> exchange for one less memorable just because the name is nonsensical. It's
> useful in well-used functions to have short, memorable names, and iota fits that
> to a t.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis