Naming things

[Bruno Medeiros via Digitalmars-d]

On 20/06/2015 10:27, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> Naming things
>
>        There are only two hard things
>        in Computer Science: cache
>        invalidation and naming things.
>        -- Phil Karlton
>
> Hello,
>
> There has been a lot of recent debate regarding the names of some new
> functions recently added to Phobos.
>
> Mostly this concerns the good work of Walter Bright, and new functions
> which operate on ranges rather than strings.
>
> A few times, many people felt that the names could have been chosen
> better - in some cases, much better. This is not a singular occurrence,
> but a recurrent one:
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/ybbwpgmgsqvmbvoqhmxm@forum.dlang.org
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/2149#issuecomment-42867964
>
>
> So far, post-merge name changes have been rejected:
>
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3243
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3426
>
> Two examples of controversial name pairs: setExt/setExtension, and
> toLower/toLowerCase. These functions have the same functionality, but
> one of them is eager, and the other is lazy. Can you guess which is which?
>

Can I guess which is which? I wouldn't guess, I would just look at the 
doc to figure it out!

Think opening up a browser and looking up the function doc online is 
cumbersome/annoying? You're right, so just use an IDE that shows the 
DDoc of the function during code completion. Problem trivially solved. 
(Both DDT and Mono-D support this functionality)


>
> I would like to present a very similar case in another language,
> JavaScript.
>
> The String method has two functions with a similar name and
> functionality: "substr" and "substring". If you were to search the web,
> you can find a multitude of confusion over these functions:
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3745515/what-is-the-difference-between-substr-and-substring
>
> https://nathanhoad.net/javascript-difference-between-substr-and-substring
> http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2013/08/difference-between-substr-vs-substring-in-JavaScript-tutorial-example.html
>
> https://rapd.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/javascript-substr-vs-substring/
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAameXW5r10
>
> I think it's safe to say that it's one of JavaScript's many small warts.
>

Javascript doesn't have a Javadoc/DDoc analogue, does it? So, not 
applicable.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros