[erlang-questions] string:lexeme/s2 - an old man's rant

[empro2@REDACTED]

On Thu, 9 May 2019 23:34:00 +1200
"Richard O'Keefe" <raoknz@REDACTED> wrote:

> To be honest, the first time I saw the function name
> 'tokens', I expected something returning *Erlang* tokens

That is what I meant by "foisting meaning onto substrings".


> aString subStrings: separators
>
> The first thing to note is that this actually violates
> Smalltalk naming conventions:

First thing I noted was: they also allow more than one
separator at once. Against a performance argument I weigh
simplicity, all the more so if separating substrings
would allow interdependencies (a simple hint at list
order might suffice to prevent such).


> 'substrings'. One has renamed it to aString
> asCollectionOfSubstringsSeparatedByAnyOf: separators

Reminds me of my contextfreely-descriptive names of 20
years ago ...


> One of these days I must really ask to be allowed to edit
> some of the Erlang documentation, but I'm afraid that if
> I do people will discover that I'm better at criticising
> than writing.

That is why I would like to bring in the host of fools like
myself, who do not yet "know what is meant" but have
workforce in numbers. We have to read it anyway and only at
this point we remember what is "useful" and the questions
that come up; but I think it unlikely people will go dig up
source and push pull forget what they were doing. I cannot
work that way (possibly lack of git routine), and I cannot
stand to ignore all those opportunities to improve
something good. So I cannot get on with my rubbish code,
hit the git-index-stage-cached-confusion, which starts
all this over again, and ... forget what I wanted to
do ... :-)

~Michael

--

Satire is the opium of the intellectual.