[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Retiring `where` from for-in loops

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 12:47 PM, James Berry <jberry at rogueorbit.com> wrote:

>
> On Jun 10, 2016, at 10:17 AM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
> I think this idea--if you don't like it, then you don't have to use it--is
> indicative of a key worry here: it's inessential to the language and
> promotes dialects wherein certain people use it and others wherein they
> don't. This is an anti-goal.
>
>
> I’m not sold on the argument that there can’t be areas of the language
> that are inessential. Yes, we could build a language with extremely limited
> control structures (conditional branch and goto), and they would be used by
> 100% of the users. Beyond that, however, everything is “inessential”.
> Adding room for elegance and expressiveness, even when perhaps initially
> seldom used, doesn’t seem wrong: this language is still young, after all.
> Let’s not shoot decide a feature isn’t used before we even give it a chance
> to be recognized as a feature.
>

I do agree with the premise here. There is absolutely something to be said
for elegance and expressiveness. Moreover, expressiveness goes hand in hand
with facilitating correctness. We could reduce everything to goto's and
conditional branches, but correctness suffers greatly and readability of
the code would be abysmal--and I think I'll find agreement that it's a
solidly grounded opinion.

So "inessential" alone is not a good sole criterion--I agree. But it is one
of several prongs here: `where` is not only inessential, I argue that it
lacks expressiveness (in that what is enabled by it can be expressed
equally or even more cogently with `guard`, a more general and more
expressive syntax overall), and it detracts from rather than helps with
writing correct code, because we hear attestations that its use has gone
awry (and the going awry happens at runtime!). So in essence, I would be
content with inessential but expressive solutions, but here I argue that
`where` is neither essential nor expressive.

Elegance is in the eye of the beholder, but FWIW I do not find `where`
elegant; it irks me greatly from an aesthetic point of view just as it
delights others. I see no point in debating personal taste, however.


> I would argue that at least one reason the where clause is little used on
> for-in loops in code in the field is that it’s barely documented. I don’t
> see any reference to it, or example of it, in the Swift 2.2 language guide.
> One has to read the grammar for the for statement in the more technical
> Language Reference in order to find it, and even there it’s behavior is not
> defined that I can see.
>
> Using or not using a feature does not create a dialect of a language.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 12:10 let var go <letvargo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Leave it in!
>>
>> It's a great little tool. I don't use it very often, but when I do it is
>> because I've decided that in the context of that piece of code it does
>> exactly what I want it to do with the maximum amount of clarity.
>>
>> If you don't like it, then don't use it, but I can't see how it detracts
>> from the language at all.
>>
>> The *only* argument that I have heard for removing it is that some people
>> don't immediately intuit how to use it. I didn't have any trouble with it
>> at all. It follows one of the most basic programming patterns ever: "For
>> all x in X, if predicate P is true, do something." The use of the keyword
>> "where" makes perfect sense in that context, and when I read it out loud,
>> it sounds natural: "For all x in X where P, do something." That is an
>> elegant, succinct, and clear way of stating exactly what I want my program
>> to do.
>>
>> I don't doubt that it has caused some confusion for some people, but I'm
>> not sold that that is a good enough reason to get rid of it. It seems
>> strange to get rid of a tool because not everyone understands how to use it
>> immediately, without ever having to ask a single question. As long as its
>> not a dangerous tool (and it isn't), then keep it in the workshop for those
>> times when it comes in handy. And even if there is some initial confusion,
>> it doesn't sound like it lasted that long. It's more like, "Does this work
>> like X, or does this work like Y? Let's see...oh, it works like X. Ok."
>> That's the entire learning curve...about 5 seconds of curiosity followed by
>> the blissful feeling of resolution.
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 9:32 AM Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
>> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Sean Heber via swift-evolution <
>>> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > And to follow-up to myself once again, I went to my "Cool 3rd Party
>>>> Swift Repos" folder and did the same search. Among the 15 repos in that
>>>> folder, a joint search returned about 650 hits on for-in (again with some
>>>> false positives) and not a single for-in-while use.
>>>>
>>>> Weird. My own Swift projects (not on Github :P) use “where” all the
>>>> time with for loops. I really like it and think it reads *and* writes far
>>>> better as well as makes for nicer one-liners. In one project, by rough
>>>> count, I have about 20 that use “where” vs. 40 in that same project not
>>>> using “where”.
>>>>
>>>> In another smaller test project, there are only 10 for loops, but even
>>>> so one still managed to use where.
>>>>
>>>> Not a lot of data without looking at even more projects, I admit, but
>>>> this seems to suggest that the usage of “where” is going to be very
>>>> developer-dependent. Perhaps there’s some factor of prior background at
>>>> work here? (I’ve done a lot of SQL in another life, for example.)
>>>>
>>>
>>> That is worrying if true, because it suggests that it's enabling
>>> 'dialects' of Swift, an explicit anti-goal of the language.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I feel like “where” is a more declarative construct and that we should
>>>> be encouraging that way of thinking in general. When using it, it feels
>>>> like “magic” for some reason - even though there’s nothing special about
>>>> it. It feels like I’ve made the language work *for me* a little bit rather
>>>> than me having to contort my solution to the will of the language. This may
>>>> be highly subjective.
>>>>
>>>> l8r
>>>> Sean
>>>>
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