On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Martin D Kealey wrote:
On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Timothy S. Nelson wrote:
Renamed Temporal::Instant to Temporal::DateTime
Hmm. We had some mailing list discussion about this, and agreed on
Instant. I'd like to see your reasons in favour of DateTime.
Because DateTime makes sense and is a clear description of what the thing
is. Instant is incredibly ambiguous, and not a common term for such things.
Hmm. Ah, I can see why it's ambiguous. For those who missed it, think of
what "instant" means in the context of "Instant coffee". I think I still
slightly prefer "instant", but I don't mind much any more :).
Ah, we want a noun that isn't readily confused as an adjective.
Suitable terms might include: Instant Jiffy Juncture Moment Occasion Snap Tick
...
The originator of "Instant" rejected "Moment" on the basis that in
physics, it's used in a variety of ways such as "moment of inertia", etc. My
personal feeling is that Occasion has other connotations we don't want.
Anyway, $Larry has decreed that it be Instant, unless you've given him
an idea above. I like jiffy, myself, but Wikipedia says "In computing, a
jiffy is the duration of one tick of the system timer interrupt". If we take
that as gospel, we probably want to avoid it. I'd also avoid calling
something "Snap" unless it breaks :). Tick has similar problems to Jiffy. I
don't know anything about Junctures, except that the potential for confusion
with the Perl6 feature "Junction" is huge.
IOW, none of them are perfect :).
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| Name: Tim Nelson | Because the Creator is, |
| E-mail: wayl...@wayland.id.au | I am |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----
Version 3.12
GCS d+++ s+: a- C++$ U+++$ P+++$ L+++ E- W+ N+ w--- V-
PE(+) Y+>++ PGP->+++ R(+) !tv b++ DI++++ D G+ e++>++++ h! y-
-----END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
