On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 3:54 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Brendan Eich <[email protected]> wrote: > > See the thread containing Dean Landolt's dissent on 'length' being the > best > > name: > > > > https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2011-November/018571.html > > > > The January 19 2012 meeting notes recorded here: > > > > https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2012-January/019784.html > > > > include "At next meeting MarkM will present a tiny API proposal for maps > and > > sets." > > In today's practice, iterables are ducktyped by the presence of a > "length" property. IME they're ducktyped by the presence of forEach (this is far from perfect). Length has nothing to do with iterability. What about generators? > I don't think an "[implication of] metric > topology" matters to basically anyone who's not a huge language-design > nerd. ^_^ > I'm pretty sure math geeks would disagree. > Additionally, having multiple names for the "size of" property makes > it more difficult to learn, and more difficult to create generic code. > That's a bold assertion. I'd argue that having two different names for two things that are *fundamentally different* is quite practical. It's especially useful for writing generic code ;) But more practically we *need *different names -- setting length has certain expectations that wouldn't hold across all collections. Violating these expectations would make things ever more difficult to learn...and generic code even harder to write.
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