[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0169: Improve Interaction Between private Declarations and Extensions

[Tino Heth]

> Also, while some have mentioned that this adds complexity to the access control system because types are now a factor, to that I say: this is purely a theoretical issue. In practice, developers don't care that this is case, and just care that the access control logic makes sense when using it. As someone who's had to explain why fileprivate is necessary many times to new Swift developers when using extensions, I can assure you that using this proposed private definition makes more intuitive sense to them.
Well, I guess than it would be the best to ignore private completely and only teach the model of Swift 2:
Without private, access control is completely separated from from extensions (mixing concerns rarely makes things easier), and you save yourself from the questions why extension A can't see a property declared five lines above, wheres extension B at the bottom of the same file has no such problem.
No one really knows what's better for the "average Swift programmer", and no matter how many newcomers you have met, I doubt it is a significant share of all Swift users out there.

Sticking to facts, we have a steady increase of access control complexity, and this is pepped by adding special rules to work around perceived or real inconveniences.
SE-0169 aims to be a small change with minimal impact, but those pile up easily...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20170417/2f3fa8c8/attachment.html>