<div dir="ltr">On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 6:08 PM, Brandon Knope via swift-evolution <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" target="_blank">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Actually… we can go pretty scientific on this sort of thing and heat map keyboard usage to get a better picture of how “usable” this is.<div><br></div><div>I pasted a file that contains seven \’s in it and heat mapped it at <a href="https://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/heatmap-keyboard/" target="_blank">https://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/heatmap-keyboard/</a></div><div><br></div><div>Even *with* several \’s throughout my source file the majority of my key presses take place much closer to the $ key than the \ key.</div><div><br></div><div>I think we can all argue about what is clearer or not, but I think for the majority of us, the \ key is quite inconvenient compared to the keys around where we type the most.</div><div><br></div><div>I also ran several of iOS 10’s sample code through the heat map and continue to get pretty similar results: the \ is much further from the hottest part of the keyboard than the ones closer to where your hand usually rests.</div><div><br></div><div>Maybe this is flawed, but I think it is hard to argue that the \ is easy to type when there are far more usable alternatives.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm rather unpersuaded by this line of argument. The keyboard is only so big; it's a stretch to say that any key is less than absolutely usable. Moreover, \ is next the delete key, which I presume you use frequently and find no difficulty in reaching.</div><div><br></div><div>You know what *is* unusable though? Try finding the $ key on an international keyboard.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>Brandon</div><div><div class="h5"><div><br><div><br></div><div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Jun 21, 2016, at 6:10 PM, Daniel Resnick via swift-evolution <<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" target="_blank">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>> wrote:</div><br><div><div dir="ltr">I also disagree for the same reasons that Gwynne and Brent mentioned: I find '\(...)' easy to read, fine to type, and consistent with other string escaping syntax.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 3:55 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" target="_blank">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span>> I find that typing \(var) is very disruptive to my typing flow. The more I code in Swift, the more I like it, but every time I'm coding and then have to hiccup while typing \ then ( causes me to be annoyed. I know, it's minor, but it isn't a key combination that flows quickly.<br>
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> I would much rather have $() or perhaps ${} (like Groovy lang) or perhaps @() to go along with other uses of @ throughout the language.<br>
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</span>Even though I'm used to Perl's and Ruby's interpolation syntaxes, I immediately liked `\(…)`. It's parsimonious: Rather than taking a third character (besides \ and ") to mean something special in a string literal, it reuses one of the existing ones. There's no need to escape a character you wouldn't otherwise have to touch, or to think of another character as "magical" in a string. It fits nicely with the rest of the syntax, with `\` indicating a special construct and then `()` delimiting an expression, just as they do elsewhere in the language. It's an elegant solution to a problem traditionally solved inelegantly. It's very Swifty in that way.<br>
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> A shifted key, like $ or @, followed by another shifted key like (, allows for a much faster flow and they are much closer to the home keys than \ which is nearly as far from home keys as possible (and awkward).<br>
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</span>I don't have any trouble typing it personally. If you find yourself accidentally typing `\9` or `|(`, we could probably offer an error for the former or warning for the latter with a fix-it. But if you're complaining that it takes a tiny fraction of a second longer to type than `$(` would, then honestly, I just can't bring myself to care. Swift optimizes for code reading. If we wanted to optimize for code typing instead, we'd have a very different style.<br>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Brent Royal-Gordon<br>
Architechies<br>
</font></span><div><div><br>
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