[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0005 Better Translation of Objective-C APIs Into Swift

[Trent Nadeau]

Agreed. Trying to shoehorn code into (very inconsistent) English grammar
should be a non-goal, IMHO. It becomes especially strange when you start
dealing with using various combinations of defaulted parameters. Should the
API designer try to check all possible combinations of which params are
used and defaulted to see if they read like English?

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Radosław Pietruszewski <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> It’s important to be able to talk about these methods in a natural way,
> and a natural way to say this sentence in English is to put that connecting
> word there.
>
>
> Why is this so important? You’re saying “this sentence”, but it’s not a
> sentence, and it’s not English. You can easily add the words “with” or
> “and” when trying to verbalize method names, but those words don't help at
> all in readability of code in its natural medium.
>
> One option we discussed was to put the connecting word into the label
> instead of the method name:
>
> foo(withOptions:)
> description(withLocale:)
>
>
> Having “options” and “locale” on the parameters side of the method call is
> great, but then if you make this effort, there’s no value in keeping “with”.
>
> — Radek
>
> On 29 Jan 2016, at 22:18, Tony Parker via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 29, 2016, at 12:07 PM, Jordan Rose via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 28, 2016, at 14:15, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
> I'm very used to "fooWithBar: baz" meaning either "get me the foo that
> has a bar matching baz" or "create me a foo with its bar set to
> baz".
>
>
> That's great, when that's what "with" means.
>
> But I'm not sure this new convention is any worse, now that the base
> name isn't assumed to include the first argument.
>
>
> The problem is that, I'm guessing at least 50% of the time, "with" is
> just used as a vacuous connector to make the method name sound
> grammatical, and "fooWithBar" doesn't actually mean the "foo" has-a
> "bar."  In these cases, it's actively misleading. I know that's not what
> you were posting about, but I felt it had to be said :-/
>
>
> I actually don't think this is true when "foo" is a noun (and searching
> through the selector dump Doug made a long time ago seems to back that up).
>
> Exceptions:
> - "fooWithOptions", but that's already caught by the default parameter
> rule.
> - "fooWithLocale", which uses the locale to build the result.
> - "commonPrefixWithString", where the "with" isn't *quite* vacuous.
>
> But when "foo" is a verb (or when it's a later parameter that's just
> "withBar") it does seem pretty vacuous.
>
> Jordan
>
>
> It’s important to be able to talk about these methods in a natural way,
> and a natural way to say this sentence in English is to put that connecting
> word there.
>
> One option we discussed was to put the connecting word into the label
> instead of the method name:
>
> foo(withOptions:)
> description(withLocale:)
>
> etc.
>
> - Tony
>
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>
>
>
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>


-- 
Trent Nadeau
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