food for thought - swift 5 released - bottom types, string interpolation, and stuff.

[Walter Bright]

On 4/11/2019 4:24 PM, Mike Franklin wrote:
> On Thursday, 11 April 2019 at 23:03:00 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>>   bool isOdd(int i) { return i & 1; }
>>
>> Filling the standard library with trivia is not a good idea. Not knowing about 
>> a common operator is not a reason to add library functions.
> 
> For me it's not about knowledge of the operator.

That was the reason given for it.


> It's about conveying the 
> reason for why that operation is being done.  For example, if you do `i & 1` are 
> you checking for even or odd, or are you masking off irrelevant bits.

If you're masking bits, you should call it:

    return i & MyBitFlag;


> Creating functions like `isOdd` or `GetLeastSignificantBit` help convey intent without 
> having to supplement code with comments.

No they don't. For example, if I saw "isOdd" in code, I'd wonder what the heck 
that was doing. I'd go look up its documentation, implementation, test cases, 
etc., find out "oh, it's just doing the obvious thing", and be annoyed at the 
waste of my time.

It wastes the time of everyone reading the code, documenting the function, and 
the QA staff. It hides the useful stuff in the library when it's alongside a 
morass of junk like this. It wastes the time of the poor shlub perusing the 
library. It makes the library look like a bunch of filler rather than useful stuff.

I don't believe anybody's code is so well-documented that this is all that's 
left. Meaning you're wasting your time documenting the wrong things.

I call this sort of stuff the "Illusion of Progress".