On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:51:11 -0400, Bill Baxter <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Steven
Schveighoffer<[email protected]> wrote:
I want to use the parentheses or lack thereof as part of the human
meaning
for the function/property. Making them optional means I can't do that.
I think Andrei's right here.
.seconds() really was too ambiguous a name to begin with. Even if we
had properties I would be inclined to think that was just something
you forgot to mark as a property because a property-like meaning is
all that makes sense to me. The meaning of .fromSeconds() is much
more obvious.
I think in the sense that 'seconds' is not a verb, and therefore, it's not
obvious (perhaps to some) that
TimeSpan.seconds(5);
returns a TimeSpan that represents 5 seconds is a valid point. But what
happens in those cases is the user is slightly confused and looks up the
docs (probably once). The argument from Andrei is simply dodging the
issue.
ts.seconds = 5;
Means the same thing (even with Andrei's new rule), and not because I
poorly named the function, but because I happened to name it the same as a
member function. That you can call a static function via an instance is
one bug IMO, and the other is that the function is even considered as a
property.
The example of adjectives or nouns that are also verbs is much better
--- .empty vs .empty(). Others that come to mind: clean, dirty,
end, begin. (begin isn't really a noun but it's been used that way
for so long in STL that C++ people think of it as a synonym for
"beginning".)
I was using a real-life example, I think that has some power to it. But
you are right, naming the static method differently was probably the right
move anyways, and there are better theoretical examples. There was some
pressure to make the usage less verbose...
-Steve
