> Why is it important to highlight word boundaries in so many other conventions
> in Swift but not in this one? What would be lost with this alternative?
>
> public
> module_private
> file_private
> private
>
> Is it just the extra (chorded, on US keyboards) keystroke? I think the
> readability benefits of clear word boundaries far outweigh the keystroke cost
> (especially with good editor auto-complete).
Swift style, deriving from Objective-C style, seems to disfavor underscores in
general, except as a "formally public but informally private" marker at the
beginning of an identifier. We're in the process of removing the last
underscored language constructs, `@warn_unused_result` and its
`mutable_variant` parameter, and replacing them with alternatives without
underscores.
So if we wanted to mark a word boundary, we'd probably use camelCase. And to
me, camelCase just feels wrong for keywords, particularly ones as common as
access modifiers. I think it's because identifiers are camelCase too; you
really want keywords to disappear into the background, but in something like
this:
modulePrivate func spinWicket() {
That `modulePrivate` looks like an identifier—maybe a return type or
something—rather than a keyword.
Honestly, though, I'm not sure why people are working so hard to cram `private`
in there. Does `moduleprivate` or `private(module)` really convey more
information than `module`? Particularly once you've looked it up and know that
it's an access modifier?
--
Brent Royal-Gordon
Architechies
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