Breaking backwards compatiblity

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, March 11, 2012 13:16:44 Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/11/2012 8:34 AM, deadalnix wrote:
> > I do think better name isn't the problem. The problem is about
> > consistency, and will persist as long as we don't agree on a guideline on
> > that in phobos.
> > 
> > Changing a name just for changing it doesn't worth the cost, unless the
> > original name is horribly misleading - rare case. But getting the naming
> > convention consistent is of much greater importance, and justify breaking
> > code.
> Frankly, I think naming conventions are overrated. The problem is that, as
> the sec vs seconds debate shows, there is not a correct answer. It becomes
> a bikeshed issue. There are a lot of considerations for a name, usually
> conflicting with each other. To set rules in concrete and follow them no
> matter what is a formula for silly results.
> 
> I'm not suggesting no naming convention. Naming conventions are good. But
> they don't trump everything else in importance, not even close.
> 
> And sometimes, a name change can be a huge win - the invariant=>immutable
> one is an example. But I think that's an exceptional case, not a rule.

Another issue is the question of what you consider consitency to be. On the 
whole, I really don't see much inconsistent about Phobos' naming at this 
point. The main problem that it's had is that it hasn't always used 
camelcasing historically, and a number of functions weren't camelcased like 
the rest and like we'd decide we wanted our function names and enum values to 
generally be. That's mostly been fixed. And yet there are still some people 
complaining about consistency. And to boot, other than the issue of secs vs 
seconds, I don't know what they even think is inconsistent.

Some very basic conventions (such as the normal casing rules for various types 
of symbols) are certainly helpful, but you _are_ going to have corner cases, 
and if we tried to have strict and complicated rules on naming, it would just 
be frustrating all around. Not to mention, there's always _someone_ who comes 
up with a reason why they think that a particular name is bad or doesn't fit 
with the rest.

So, I think that Phobos is mostly consistent with its naming at this point, 
and aside from some people not liking the name of a function or two, I really 
don't see what there is to complain about.

- Jonathan M Davis