Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

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Come on, that's a complete bikeshed and I'm sure you know it. If you have to read code aloud you can just say "fun" or "function" and "mod" or "module", obviously. And since those symbols are used everywhere in the source code I really doubt anybody is going to forget what they mean.

I know it's trendy to remove all non alnum characters and make everything super verbose but there's a compromise to make here. Because some languages went overboard with symbol soup doesn't mean all symbols/abbreviations are bad.

This is the kind of reacting any newcomer to a language makes. You start with lisp? "omg all those parens!" You start with python? "omg significant whitespace!" You start with C? "OMG all those semicolon at the end of lines!" You start with perl? "OMG!" You start with APL? "O|▼".

Also I think making basic language constructs overly verbose doesn't help legibility because it drowns the actually interesting bits in a lot of boilerplate. VHDL comes to mind, but it's probably not what you were talking about...

Bikeshed or not, he's not the only one who doesn't like "fn" choice. The shortnaming choices aren't really consistent. IMHO, "fun" would be better.

  as box break continue crate else enum extern false fn for if impl in let loop match mod mut priv proc pub ref return self static struct super true trait type unsafe use while

On the other hand, it is Huffman-coded: "fn", "impl", and "mod" are quite common, compared to, say, "continue", which is rare.

I like fn a lot more than fun. fns are serious business! (and personally I have a hard time dealing with abbreviations that are themselves actual words, fn stands out more)

fwiw, continue and return used to be cont and ret, match used to be alt, crate used to be not a keyword iirc.

> The shortnaming choices aren't really consistent

It's historical. Rust's keywords used to be far more short on average - I think the rule was no more than 5 characters.

fn bugs me as well.

fun would have been better: - ML heritage for named functions (fn was anon) - muscle memory with the leading part of javascript function - the other abbreviations take the leading part of the word

I dont read code aloud, but when reading it I have to make the sounds in my head. Makes sense?

fn calculate() does not lead my brain/mind to discover everything there is it already knows that is function and what it means in this specific context, but instead if I read it as fun it takes me to fun times calculating tip at college with friends.

mod means modification. Modulus. Or module. Why oh why, cant they just write freaking word module?!

Thats what programming is about - kill assumptions, define stuff, and Rust is flowing with assumptions and tersness.

Ada is what I am talking about - a very fine verbose language. Even Java is better than rust.

I think if Mozilla designed Java, it would look like this

pub cls Dfne {

priv stat fin Str hey;

}

You better get over that problem because, depending on the language and context, you will find function written as fn, func, def, ->, lambda and many more. Some languages even don't offer a keyword for it.

In Rust, the function keyword is written 'fn', there're no assumptions or ambiguity there. You just have to learn "in Rust fn means function". It's as capricious as any other keyword, including function.

As a non-native English speaker I find this amusing because for me it's very clear that keywords are magic incantations for the compiler or interpreter, they aren't meant to explain anything. You just learn how to use those keywords and deal with it. For me, it's not clearer to write function instead of fn because in my native language you write it 'función'.

In my experience, it's not rare for Spanish-speaking programmers to ommit the t in function as it is the clearest and most natural way for them to write it. Then, when the program doesn't work, they have to add the missing ts. I feel fn is an improvement with regards to this, as it's not so English-centered. Let's stop pretending that programming a computer is a mixture of Logic, Math and English.

I agree with the core of what you're saying. fn vs function vs whatever is simply a way for the compiler to read your program. However, I feel like it's a mistake to say natural language has nothing to do with programming.

The most powerful metaphor I use when I explain to newer developers how to write clear code is simply "tell a story." Of course you're telling a very constrained story, and some parts need a little comment to explain them, but I strongly believe that even if you're using english keywords, you should be telling a story in the development team's native language if possible. Not everything is a binary choice, even in computing. ;)

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