[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0023 API Design Guidelines

[Joe Groff]

> When a mutating method is described by a verb, name its non-mutating counterpart according to the “ed/ing” rule, e.g. the non-mutating versions of x.sort() and x.append(y) are x.sorted() and x.appending(y).
This is a nice rule in theory, but English fights it with the full fury of its irregularity. There are a lot of common operations whose past tense shares a spelling with the infinitive—'split', 'cut', 'read', and 'cast' immediately come to mind. How do you handle naming non-mutating versions of these operations? Conjugating other irregular verbs also imposes a barrier on developers whose first language is not English.

-Joe
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