Jon Pretty on Twitter: "Also, look at us... 🙄 everything is so rosy in Scalaland this evening that our biggest complaint right now is tpe vs type!… https://t.co/t9ZM0kkNim"

@propensive

Supporting Scala through professional training and open-source software. Responsible for Magnolia, Fury, Scala World and Functional Africa.

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Joined July 2010

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Dale Wijnand‏ @dwijnand 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @steveklabnik @jedisct1 @pcwalton

Interesting how ructc uses "ty" while scalac uses "tpe".

1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes

Lars Hupel‏ @larsr_h 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @dwijnand

… and Isabelle uses "typ"

1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes

Jon Pretty‏ @propensive 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @larsr_h @dwijnand

Embrace the backticks. We should use "`type`"!

2 replies 1 retweet 5 likes

Lars Hupel‏ @larsr_h 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @propensive @dwijnand

why am I not surprised that this is coming from you

1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes

Jon Pretty‏ @propensive 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @larsr_h @dwijnand

Maybe because I've been saying for years, a) features exist so they can be used, and b) arbitrary choices (e.g. choice of abbreviation) are not intuitive, while taking the uniquely obvious option, even if it's slightly inconvenient, is.

2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes

Dale Wijnand‏ @dwijnand 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @propensive @larsr_h

How many times and across how many people are you willing to multiple that "slightly inconvenient" before you consider the alternative (teaching newcomers that "tpe" means "type") a better trade-off?

2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes

Jon Pretty‏ @propensive 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @dwijnand @larsr_h

The trade-off is on the learning curve, for the benefit of the uninitiated and to the detriment of the experienced. Everyone has the cost of learning that tpe = type, but only the subset who use it extensively feel the cost of typing the backticks.

4 replies 0 retweets 3 likes

Dale Wijnand‏ @dwijnand 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @propensive @larsr_h

Not exactly, in my opinion. Everyone has the cost of learning _once_ that tpe = type, compared to everyone _always_ having the cost of typing the backticks (as well as teaching newcomers about backtick escaping.)

1 reply 0 retweets 1 like

Jon Pretty‏ @propensive 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @dwijnand @larsr_h

But I think there's a difference in the value of those two things which need to be learned: backtick-escaping is a language feature which is generally useful to know; a transferable skill. But tpe = type is arbitrary knowledge, which can't be reliably applied elsewhere.

2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

Jon Pretty‏ @propensive 9 Mar 2019

Replying to @propensive @dwijnand @larsr_h

I also feel like backticks look weird because they're unfamiliar. We avoid them because they're rare, and they stay rare because we avoid them. Sure, they're never going to be commonplace, but I sort of feel we shouldn't keep them artificially and disproportionately uncommon.

2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes