What a ridiculous argument to defend the violation of a convention: because
"it's four less characters to type" (only once at the top of the file no
less!!) That has all of the merit of someone defending the going back to
using variable names like 'a1', 'b1' and 'b2' because they are "less
verbose". I think that the software development world has evolved way past
you guys.
Four 'extra' characters, one time in an import statement, in order to obtain
a globally unique identity, and adhere to a convention accepted by the rest
of the Java development community, is going to be "..a hell of a lot
(harder)"?!
C'mon, you can't be serious!! Tell me in writing that you're serious.
-----Original Message-----
From: John Keiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Classpat 2 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, September 12, 1999 9:01 PM
Subject: RE: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
>Wow, didn't know this many people were alive and computing on Sundays :)
>
>My two cents: gnu.* is a hell of a lot easier to use and think about than
>org.gnu.*. I still think it looks silly to import com.sun like in JavaDoc.
>But I perfectly understand them putting stuff they *don't* want other
people
>to use (or don't care) in com.sun.*.
>
>Sun gets to create public interfaces in java.*, why don't we get to create
>public interfaces in gnu.*?
>
>Frankly, there are only going to be a few major contributors whose toolkits
>are going to be *extremely* widely used, and GNU is probably one of them.
>Making it easy to type and use and think about (less mental friction) is a
>good thing.
>
>--John Keiser
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Thomas Down
>> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 1999 5:58 PM
>> To: Aaron M. Renn
>> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject: org.gnu vs. gnu (was Re: Congratulations)
>>
>>
>> "Aaron M. Renn" wrote:
>> >
>> > I'm opposed to org.gnu for the same reason that I hate email addresses
>> > of the form [EMAIL PROTECTED] It purports to be some type of
>> > globally unique identifier when in fact it is not. In the meantime,
>> > it requires names that are extremely verbose. At my last company
>> > we had two Gregory R. Barrett's. One of them ended up a
>> gregory.r.barrett
>> > and the other at greg.r.barrett. It's like making your hash table
>> > really, really big in the hopes you won't have a collision.
>>
>> I'm not quite sure that follows... so long as each package has a
>> defined owner who controls what goes in it, there should never be a
>> namespace collision using the standard Java system. Okay, code-forks
>> spoil this a little bit, but I think the principle still holds.
>> Actually, I'd go so far as to say that one of the really cool things
>> about Java is that it DOES encourage people to give every class a
>> globally unique identifier, and this is a Good Thing for efficient code
>> reuse.
>>
>> It's an unfortunate fact that it's hard to have useful unique
>> identifiers without using some form of central registry. One option
>> would have been for Sun to run such a registry themselves, but I'm sure
>> that would have led to all manner of cries of foul play (and they might
>> well have charged for registrations, which I dare say would have led to
>> even more complains). Using the DNS as the registry for Java package
>> names seems a very neat way out of the problem, and while I accept that
>> the names aren't especially pretty, I don't think they cause any real
>> problems -- and normally they only affect the package and import
>> statements at the top of the source files, anyway.
>>
>> It's kind-of a pity that there are sun.* packages, but to be fair, some
>> of these must have existed before the current naming scheme was
>> developed. And Sun do sometimes set a good example: before Swing moved
>> to its new home in javax, it was always com.sun.swing, and all the Jini
>> stuff lives in net.jini.
>>
>> In reality, having things in gnu.* isn't actually doing anybody any
>> harm, but I'm not sure it's something that anyone can get moralistic
>> about, given that Sun are pretty clear as to how things are supposed to
>> work, and you can't really argue that it's not fair. Of course, if
>> people asked Sun nicely, they might even approve gnu as an `official'
>> top level package -- but think carefully before trying that one, it
>> might just be opening pandora's box.
>>
>> Thomas.
>>
>>
>
