Re: Creation (originally - Re: Is Smart Eiffel ready for large-... )

On 13/04/2005, at 5:12 PM, Frank Salter wrote:
> It needs to be different. Consider
> creation  {}  make_1, make_2, make_3;   --  makes sense;  presents a 
> list of procedures to be activated later
> compared to the ETL3 way
> create  {}  make_1, make_2, make_3;   --  Clearly the imperative can 
> not be applicable here;  Should it create all three?

A plausible argument, but I don't find it convincing. It's not clear to 
me that the imperative is inapplicable. It's instructing the class to 
create with these three routines. Sure, creation will occur at some 
later time and place, but that's not specified here. What's specified 
here is how to create.

I much prefer the consistency of the imperative 'create'. If we could 
find a different one-word way of saying, "allow creation with", then I 
would prefer that. But I can't think of any such verb.

I recall when I read OOSC2 in 1998, that I found the term "creation" a 
bit irksome. It seemed at odds with everything else. I was pleased to 
discover a few years ago that it was obsolete in favour of "create".

> The other important consideration is about tools.  If you use a 
> moronic development environment, it can cope easily with the 
> differences required to put "creation" at the beginning of a line  and 
> "create ..."  correctly indented, by mere recognition of the different 
> words.  To produce the same effect with the single "create" requires a 
> much greater understanding of the context and parsing of the language; 
>  not a desirable requirement!

The various tools seem to be coping just fine with "create". I don't 
particularly care whether tools find it a bit difficult: that's what 
tools are for. Eiffel is designed to make life easy for humans, not 
tools. These two contexts for "create" may require our tools to be a 
bit smarter, but it obviously isn't rocket science.

Anyway, I think this debate was settled years ago. "Creation" is long 
gone. I've been working with ISE Eiffel since the middle of last year, 
and I don't think I've ever seen "creation" there. I'm amazed at the 
frequency with which this antiquity keeps popping up on this mailing 
list.

- Peter Gummer