On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 6:22 PM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <m...@apple.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Jun 30, 2010, at 10:29 AM, Eric Uhrhane wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Jonas Sicking <jo...@sicking.cc> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> May I propose FileWriter in place of BlobWriter? ;-)
>>>> You are actually always writing to files, so it would make a lot of sense
>>>> IMO.
>>>
>>> We renamed BlobReader based on the perspective that it took data from
>>> a Blob and read it into memory. Likewise BlobWriter takes data from a
>>> Blob and writes it to a file. I think the symmetry makes sense.
>>> Calling it FileWriter also works, but then you're naming by
>>> destination instead of source, so I don't think it complements
>>> BlobReader as well.
>>
>> I think it makes sense to name writer objects by the destination rather than
>> the source. It's normal to speak of reading from X, and writing to Y. You
>> rarely say you are writing from Y. If you saw a random class called
>> StreamWriter, would you expect it writes *to* a Stream, or *from* a Stream?
>>
>> Put another way, the essence of this class is that it writes something to a
>> file, not that it writes a Blob to some unspecified location. If we wanted
>> to add functionality to write something other than a Blob to a File (such
>> as, say, writing a typed array, or writing a string), then it would
>> plausibly make sense as part of the same interface used for writing a Blob
>> to a file. If we made an API to write a Blob somewhere else (such as to a
>> memory location or somewhere on the network), it really would not make sense
>> as part of the same interface.
>>
>> Thus FileWriter.
>>
>> I also think that the name Blob is pretty unpleasant and I would rather not
>> increase its prominence in the API.
>
> Agreed. On both accounts. I have yet to hear anyone like the name
> 'Blob' for anything.
I don't see what's wrong with the name Blob; I like it just fine. And
I think it's a bit odd to have a BlobReader but a FileWriter, but if
that's what everybody's happy with, I'm OK with it.
Eric
