Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous

Alix Pexton alix.DOT.pexton at gmail.DOT.com
Thu Mar 8 04:28:00 PST 2012


I feel compelled to point out that there is no such thing as "British 
English". There is English, the written language with all its archaic 
spellings and there are many spoken dialects, the most formal of which 
is RP (Received Pronunciation) sometimes called The Queen's English 
(even though she is German).

If we went to the effort of re-spelling words to match how they were 
spoken, then we would just end up with multiple accepted spellings (and 
some new letters), or a nation of 1920s radio newscasters, neither of 
which appeals to me. As it is, the archaic spellings help to make words 
more visually distinct, after all, we have some words that are spoken 
the same but spelled differently (and vice versa >< ).

As for identifiers and abbreviations, as long as they are sufficiently 
visually distinct, I'd be happy. I tolerate USian spellings as much as 
non-English speaking programmers do, because I see it as an accepted 
"Programmer's English".

Secondly, D has its "the obvious solution is the right solution" 
philosophy. so the "right" identifiers should also be the obvious ones, 
but they should also be short especially when used frequently. Longer 
identifiers should be used sparingly, but are useful to convey 
subtleties such as different side effects and of course, to make 
non-safe code stand out.

A...


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list