On 02/15/2010 09:44 PM, Justin Johansson wrote:
> Isn't it obvious to all and sundry that car is the head element
> of a singly linked list and cdr is the rest of the list with the
> head element removed?

Actually, car is the reference to the first item in the cons cell, and cdr is the second. Not just lists, you know. :)

On 14.02.2010 11:12, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2/14/10 09:14, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>
>>  Though I must say that I find retro to be a bit funny. I would have expected
>>  it to be reverse. It would be clearer, I think, but it's not like it's hard
>>  to find out what retro does and remember it.
>>
>>  - Jonathan M Davis
>
> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think "reverse" is
> a much better word.


foreach (thing; backwards(lotsOfThings))
{

}


'backwards' would be fine by me.  But then I don't seem to iterate in reverse a whole lot, so it doesn't bother me that it's twice a long as 'retro'.  Is that really a problem?

On Feb 15, 10 02:08, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> bearophile wrote:
>> Mike James:
>>> 1. Contrawise
>>> 2. Rearward
>>> 3. AssBackwards
>>> 4. Reorientated
>>> 5. Turnedabout
>>> 6. Turnedaround
>>> 7. Inversified
>>> 8. Flipped
>>> 9. Refluxed
>>> 10. VolteFace
>>>
>>> or how about Reverse...
>>
>> Wonderful, I elect you the official namer for Phobos :-)
>> And I think Andrei meant a list of all the bad names in Phobos :-)
>> What about "reversed"? :-)
>
> I don't mind "reversed" but it's longer than "retro" and the convention
> doesn't scale. For example, both active and passive forms of "split"
> look the same.
>
> Andrei

Why do you want to perform an in-place split?

On 14/02/2010 19:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>
>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think
>>>> "reverse" is a much better word.
>>> Agree.
>>>
>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or
>>> design from the recent past.
>>>
>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning
>>> isn't very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>>
>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language
>> (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point of
>> a name, a name should be clear).
>
> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name
> that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is
> understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't
> forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course
> best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please
> compile a list.
>
> Andrei

As I said multitude of times before, if you want D to be commercially successful, you need to change your priorities.
the *most* important thing to have is _clear_ and _understandable_ names by a wide international audience. The *least* important thing is shortness.

you might argue as long as you want that C++/D is technically superior to Java, but fact remains that Java is the favorite language in enterprise. One huge factor which helps this is of course the clear naming scheme in its stdlib.

On 15/02/2010 15:00, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2/14/10 18:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>> Michel Fortin, el 14 de febrero a las 07:48 me escribiste:
>>>> On 2010-02-14 05:12:41 -0500, Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com> said:
>>>>
>>>>> It iterates backwards, all the way back to the 50s. I think
>>>>> "reverse" is a much better word.
>>>> Agree.
>>>>
>>>> My dictionary says: "retro": imitative of a style, fashion, or
>>>> design from the recent past.
>>>>
>>>> It's an amusing name in the way Andrei likes it, but the meaning
>>>> isn't very clear. "reverse" would be a better name.
>>>
>>> This is a pattern in Andrei, which I think it really hurts the language
>>> (the names are very clever and funny, but that shouldn't be the point of
>>> a name, a name should be clear).
>>
>> At least in this case being funny was not the point. I needed a name
>> that was (a) short, (b) different from "reverse", (c) memorable. It is
>> understood that other paint colors are available, but please don't
>> forget to give a little love to the painter. :o) It would be of course
>> best if names that arguably hurt the language were changed, so please
>> compile a list.
>>
>> Andrei
>
> I never understood the reason for that the names need to be short. I
> think the most important thing is that the names are clear. Just look at
> the C standard library, it's horrible, almost every name is an
> abbreviation of some kind.

C was designed in the dark ages when programmers actually tried to save bytes in their extremely limited hardware. That same age brought us the tab character, Y2k bug and FORTRAN.