Arbitrary abbreviations in phobos considered ridiculous

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:14:34 -0500, Ary Manzana <ary at esperanto.org.ar>  
wrote:

> The problem is not mistaking it with something else. The problem is when  
> you want to write it. In Ruby my mind works like this:
>
> Mind: "How would I get a span for 5 seconds?"
> Mind: "Let's try 5.seconds"
> Mind: "Wow, it works!"
>
> I'm trying to remember cases when I just wrote what my mind thought it  
> was correct and I was *so* surprised it worked out of the box in Ruby.  
> Like writing array.last, and get it to work, instead of  
> array[array.length - 1]. But in D, from the docs  
> (http://dlang.org/arrays.html )
>
> bar[$-1] // retrieves last element of the array
>
> I read: bar dollar minus one wait what??

array.back;

http://dlang.org/phobos/std_array.html#back

This is the issue with "intuition".  It's easy to say, "hey I guessed  
right in Ruby!  Ruby must be more intuitive!".  But if you were someone  
who knew the range interfaces, wouldn't you try array.back in Ruby and say  
"well, obviously D is more intuitive, it knew what I wanted without even  
looking up the docs!"

You are never going to come up with something that's *perfectly* intuitive  
for everyone in every situation.

> Now, in D I try:
>
> 5.seconds
>
> and it doesn't work. I have to write this very unintuitive:
>
> dur!"minutes"(5)
>
> Was it really necessary to implement it that way?

No, nothing is ever necessary to implement a certain way.  But there are  
practical concerns.  For example, assuming UFCS worked in D, you *could*  
possibly do 5.seconds.  However, this means you need a module-level  
function:

Duration seconds(long n) {...}

But the way D's overload resolution works, this precludes having 5.seconds  
work, and also having a member named 'seconds' in your class/struct.

The nice thing about dur!"seconds" is that only one module-level symbol is  
introduced (dur), and it's unlikely to conflict with local symbols

It may not be as intuitive, but it's certainly readable, and not too  
verbose to type.

-Steve