On Jul 22, 2016, at 2:38 PM, James Dempsey via swift-evolution <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think there might be some confusion since the Swift API Design Guidelines > session at WWDC 2016 mentions: > “One of the principles of this particular API Design Guidelines is that we > really want the use sites to read grammatically.” > and continues with a number of examples. > > and the current Swift API Design Guidelines state: > “Prefer method and function names that make use sites form grammatical > English phrases.”. > > So there has been strong guidance to prefer Swift APIs that read like English > grammar at the call site. > > But I don’t think there has been any guidance to make API declarations read > like English grammar. > > But Chris just wrote: >> I said that Swift was not designed to mock English grammar > >
We shouldn’t conflate language design and API design. It’s true that a programming language’s builtin keywords make up part of all APIs at the end of the day. But the language has a different set of priorities. Language designer (most of the time) have more syntax to worry about than API designers. The importance of term of art, succinctness, read-like-natural-language-ness…have different weights compared to APIs (not saying one way or another). > My understanding is that: > > - It is preferable for method and function names to form grammatical English > phrases at the call site — but not absolutely necessary if something that > breaks this guideline provides more clarity at the call site. > > - There is no guidance that API declarations are expected to read > grammatically > You said it in the first point: clarity at point of use is preferred, not necessarily at the point of declaration. > Is my understanding correct? > > Thanks, > > James > > ——————— > James Dempsey > [email protected] > > > >> On Jul 21, 2016, at 3:29 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Jul 21, 2016, at 3:02 PM, Daniel Steinberg via swift-evolution >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Chris’ note addressed my misconception that a goal of Swift was that it >>> could be a good first or learning language. >> >> Please clarify this. I said that Swift was not designed to mock English >> grammar. It is absolutely intended to be a good teaching language, and I >> never said otherwise. >> >> -Chris >> >> _______________________________________________ >> swift-evolution mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution _______________________________________________ swift-evolution mailing list [email protected] https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
