Guys,
This is a fascinating debate. Could we move it to the debating venue, scala-debate?
Best wishes,
--greg
P.S. i have two competing feelings on this whole thing. On the one hand i believe that one of the principle activities of a group is the bootstrapping and development of a specific, common language that matches their time, place and purpose. Consistency is to be measured relative to those dimensions. Sometimes something that appears to be a break in consistency (in a language) is really a way into some perspective or conceptual tool that was once useful to the group.
On the other hand, names can have objective relationships to the thing they name. i've given this example before on this list, but it is an important one, so i give it again. The positions on the periodic table are names. They name elements. The internal structure of the name (the coordinates of the location in the periodic table) provide enough information to predict how one element will interact with another. Names like 'makeString' vs 'mkString' do not provide such an intriguing capability. It is possible to devise such naming schemes and get real mileage out of them, but they are a long way from common practice at the moment.
On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Viktor Klang
<viktor.klang@...> wrote:
"Backwards compatible", does this somehow mean that it's compatible for backwards people?On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 7:47 PM, Nils Kilden-Pedersen
<nilskp@...> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Ken Egervari
<ken.egervari@...> wrote:
Unfortunately, Sun has took a very, very firm position that their language and core library should be "backwards compatible".
Viktor Klang
Rogue Scala-head
Twttr: viktorklang
--
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