swift-evolution Digest, Vol 3, Issue 7

(Andrew Duncan) #1

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is one of my real bugbears. I think we should call this out explicitly somewhere in the guidelines. Consider something like “updatePostThread”. (This does come from real life, and occasioned some bad words.) All three words: “update”, “post”, and “thread” are *both* noun and verb. This means that (theoretically) there could be 8 different interpretations.

I suggest a guideline that recommends avoiding verb-noun words in favor of ones that are only a noun or only a verb.

Andrew

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On 2 Feb, 2016, at 8:41, dabrahams@apple.com wrote:

* I also agree with Radosław in that I prefer `removeAll(keepCapacity:
Bool)` to `removeAll(keepingCapacity: Bool)`.

Why?

I had a hard time justifying "keeping" to myself for a while, but
eventually I realized that this pattern is less ambiguous, at least in
general, since many verbs are also nouns.

(Dave Abrahams) #2

I'm really wary of calling out every possible source of ambiguity in the
guidelines, but this one might fit well into the “Special Instructions”
section.

···

on Wed Feb 03 2016, Andrew Duncan <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

On 2 Feb, 2016, at 8:41, dabrahams@apple.com wrote:

* I also agree with Radosław in that I prefer `removeAll(keepCapacity:
Bool)` to `removeAll(keepingCapacity: Bool)`.

Why?

I had a hard time justifying "keeping" to myself for a while, but
eventually I realized that this pattern is less ambiguous, at least in
general, since many verbs are also nouns.

                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is one of my real bugbears. I think we should call this out
explicitly somewhere in the guidelines. Consider something like
“updatePostThread”. (This does come from real life, and occasioned
some bad words.) All three words: “update”, “post”, and “thread” are
*both* noun and verb. This means that (theoretically) there could be 8
different interpretations.

I suggest a guideline that recommends avoiding verb-noun words in
favor of ones that are only a noun or only a verb.

--
-Dave