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Re: underscores vs hyphens (was Re: A new era for Temporal)

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From:
Damian Conway
Date:
April 10, 2010 16:17
Subject:
Re: underscores vs hyphens (was Re: A new era for Temporal)
Message ID:
r2h832f158a1004101617s4d64e66aw9da588d1a595eccf@mail.gmail.com
John Siracusa commented:

> That's certainly an example of how hyphens might gain meaning in Perl
> 6 names, but I don't think I can endorse it as a convention.  People
> can't even use hyphens correctly in written English.  I have very
> little faith that programmers will do any better in code

But then the only alternative is to suffer under Slartibartfast's Conundrum:

    Slartibartfast: I'd much rather be happy than right, any day.
       Arthur Dent: And are you?
    Slartibartfast: Ah, well...that's where it all falls down, of course.

;-)

And is it really so hard to teach: "use underscore by default and reserve
hyphens for between a noun and its adjective"? Perhaps it *is*, but
then that's a very sad reflection on our profession.

I'm certainly not saying we mightn't collectively find a better (more
useful) rule, but that one doesn't strike me as particularly hard.

Damian

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