Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:16:56 -0500, Brad Anderson <eco at gnuk.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Jonathan M Davis  
> <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>>
> Oh, and I'd just like to add some of my experience to this. These names  
> are
> used by Boost's datetime library and they've never been a problem for me
> and at work we make extensive use of Boost datetime.  There is risk but I
> think in this specific case they are fairly small (especially in D, over
> C++).

I want to stress again the difference between C++'s namespaces, and D's  
module import mechanism.  In C++, you *deliberately* pull a namespace into  
your scope (and usually only in the implementation file, which doesn't  
affect any other implementation files), whereas in D, a standard "import  
std.datetime" *automatically* pulls its namespace into your scope, and any  
public imports it has made.

I've used boost's datetime.  I didn't really like the whole "different  
types for each unit" mechanism, but I used it with success, and was glad I  
didn't have to re-invent it :)  But then again, I used it as the original  
date/time lib for my project.

-Steve