Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, March 09, 2012 17:41:01 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I'll say I *don't* agree with the rejection of aliases on principle --
> aliases can be extremely useful/helpful, and they cost literally nothing
> (the "cognitive cost" on the docs is a BS argument IMO). I just don't
> agree with consuming so many common symbols for the sake of sugar.

aliases need to have a really good argument for existing. If UFCS is fully 
implemented, then I think that there is _some_ argument for having stuff like 
hours and minutes, because then you can do stuff like 5.seconds() (though 
honestly, I really don't like the idea). The alias enables different usages 
rather than simply being another name for the same thing.

Now, in this particular case, it's that much worse for exactly the reason that 
you're against it: it uses common names for free functions. It's not as big a 
problem as it would be in C or C++, but it's still a problem. There's also 
some risk that it will break code.

- Jonathan M Davis