SE-0376 (second review): Function back deployment

This helped solidify my feeling that upTo: is a poor choice.

  • upTo: is not a single consistent term used throughout the language, as demonstrated by stride
  • it’s striking how much uglier the compound camel-cased word is when comparing it to stride’s to:
  • there is a clear driver here that matters specifically for these two examples: the need to distinguish between “to” and “through”, that requires a matching pair of argument labels That does not apply to the availability usage.

But more important than all of these is that “the function is back deployed up to iOS 13” is an unnatural phrasing. You just wouldn’t say it in normal use. Whereas “the function is back deployed before iOS 13” is entirely natural. This isn’t just hypothetical – someone I spoke to, looking at this for the first time yesterday, was confused by what it mean until I explained it. I believe this wouldn’t have been as likely with before:.

So it seems that we are sacrificing readability for consistency (and, given the comparison with stride, mixed consistency at best), which is the wrong way around.

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