[swift-evolution] [Proposal] Random Unification

[Gwendal Roué]

> Le 17 nov. 2017 à 16:04, Alejandro Alonso via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> a écrit :
> 
> If we go back to your example, you never call FixedWidthInteger.random either, you call range.random. Does this mean integer types shouldn’t have .random? No, because it means get a random number from it’s internal range (alias to (min ... max).random). I think we can all agree that Integer.random is a nicer api than making a range of its bounds. The same goes for Date.random and Color.random.
> 
> - Alejandro

Hello,

I'm not random expert, but it has never happened in my developer life (backend & frontend app developer) that I have used a pure random value from the full domain of the random type. In this life:

- Int.random is _always_ followed by % modulo. Unless the better arc4random_uniform(max) is used.
- Color.random is _never_ used, because random colors look bad.
- Date.random is _never_ used, because time is a physical unit, and random points in time do not match any physical use case.

This does not mean that random values from the full domain are useless. Of course not: math apps, fuzzers, etc. need them.

Yet a range-based API would be much welcomed by regular app developers. And also Array.randomElement(), Array.shuffled(), etc, because there are plenty naive and bad algorithms for those simple tasks.

Gwendal Roué