Re: Proposed context property renaming

[David Kastrup]

Trevor Bača <trevorbaca@gmail.com> writes:

> On Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 1:02 PM David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> Trevor Bača <trevorbaca@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > I am concerned by what seems to be an unwillingness to use the term
>> > "duration" to label things in the system that are clearly durations.
>>
>> Computers are not fond of ambiguities.  I am concerned by what seems to
>> be an unwillingness to use consistent terminology while expecting
>> consistent results.
>>
>
> Hi David, is what's at stake here a desire to use the word "duration" to
> mean just the LilyPond-specific construct that looks like ...
>
>   4..
>   16
>   16.
>   32..
>
> ... and so on?
>
> Is that what's going on here?

"Is that what is going on here" sounds like you imagine yourself to have
uncovered a conspiracy attempting to make LilyPond harder to use.

There is nothing to be gained from trying to use the same name for
different data types just because humans are good at disentangling
ambiguities from context.

There actually is a comparatively well-known (among programmers and
computer scientists) aphorism by Alan Perlis about this:

    When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need
    only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

Terminology in LilyPond may be drawn from common vocabulary (we would
not consider calling a duration a "ruminant"), but in the context of
LilyPond's data types, a term that happens to have eight or more
dictionary meanings in the English language will have exactly one
well-defined meaning in LilyPond.

-- 
David Kastrup